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Post by notundercovercop32 on Mar 29, 2011 19:32:20 GMT -5
I don't know if this is controversial enough to be in the controversy section if it is please feel free to move it mods.
Do you believe in Childhood Innocence? When does it end? Was your childhood innocent?
I believe in childhood innocence. I hope to do everything in my power to preserve it for others. The World Sucks, you should have some period in your life when your not distraught about something.
Thoughts?
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Post by MonsterX on Mar 29, 2011 22:33:44 GMT -5
I think it's a romanticized idea that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
It should really be called childhood ignorance. Let's face it, everything is new to a little kid. The more they learn about the world the less ignorant they become. Yes, the lessons they learn are harsh but the world can be a wonderful place as well.
"Ignorant" sounds like a mean word but it's not really; it just describes the state of not knowing something. Innocence is better suited to describe a situation in which some one is either innocent or guilty of a crime, rather than as a romantic way to describe a child's lack of knowledge or experience.
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Post by Frameous on Mar 29, 2011 23:13:36 GMT -5
This is a very touchy subject, and something near and dear to me for a multitude of complicated reasons. While I would have to agree that it can be a romanticized idea, it is also a very real threshold that, if broken, can forever change the emotional and physical development of a young person. Any level of tolerance or exposure to the darker side of life can have the most dire consequences on a formative psyche. Of course there are extremes of this equation: a seemingly normal child begins murdering animals for no apparent reason while a victim of child molestation grows to lead an empowered, balanced existence. It's the vast middle ground where you find a substantial portion of humanity who have had their innocents violated and live the lives of the psychological walking wounded. They lead self destructive lives filled with poor decisions, substance abuse, and problems with authority. Their cross to bear is either getting help to overcome, living as they are until the day they die, or worst of all having children and possibly perpetuating the cycle of event.
In my honest opinion, there is much more of this out in the every day world than we are lead to believe. At our worst, humans are ugly, selfish creatures who live in a fog of fear and anger. You will have to excuse my misanthropic views.
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Post by inlovewithcrow on Mar 31, 2011 13:24:56 GMT -5
I was lucky--no physical/sexual abuse beyond one sib hitting me now and then, sober but fun parents, a more stable time in the history of the country so that for us white folks, at least, things were pretty pleasant, and so my own single-digit years were pretty innocent and happy. I do cringe away from what I know kids of today can see on-line or on TV news. Some of those images just can't do good things for the human brain. Can they?
Innocence is possible only in a stable, rich, even spoiled culture, though. It's nice when those are the circumstances and sure, why not preserve innocence to the extent you can when that's the background? 90 million children under the age of 12 die every year, and most of them do it painfully and awfully in other nations than my own. The only child I'm closely related to has it much better than that--loved, protected, safe, financially secure, and if she ends up getting some awful disease at age 10, at least there will be plenty of pain pills to see her out of life.
And I suppose I'd want to limit "innocence"'s definition. I think it's fine to tell little kids that when granny dies, she's really dead and gone, not sleeping. That doesn't mess up innocence to me. It's fine to acknowledge that little kids are sexual creatures, with vague sexual thoughts (at least I was), so I wouldn't keep every possible bit of knowledge about that realm of life from them (though of course I'm not saying mess with them--I'm saying if they're found playing doctor with a peer, don't have a cow about it.) And I suppose parents need to say, "there are bad people out there, so you just can't accept candy from stranger or go for rides with them" because if innocence is gullibility to predators, that's a problem.
On the other hand, I've met homeschooled children who were obviously homeschooled out of a sick fear of the world or of "otherness" on the part of parents, and that's preserving ignorance in a bad way.
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