Philosophical Questions: Innocence
Jan. 4th, 2025 12:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithPeople have expressed interest in deep topics, so this list focuses on philosophical questions.
If babies are considered innocent, when do people cease to be innocent?
It's a gradual process, not a sudden shift. Also, it occurs at different speeds for different people, depending on their biology, personality, and living conditions.
Babies tend to start out innocent because most humans come into this life with no memory of anything else, no sense of morality, little or no language, and a self-centered worldview with little or no sense of other people as individuals with lives of their own. So right off, there's potential for divergence. In fact, asynchronous development is one hallmark of gifted children. Conversely, delayed or limited development may retain more aspects of innocence longer due to lower capacity to grow beyond it. And some people just seem to have a personality that holds onto innocence, wonder, and simplicity regardless of their age or experience even though they are healthy.
So for instance, a baby born with active farmemory, or even the potential to access glimpses of it as needed, will already know things or learn much faster, which among other effects can cause dramatic differences in moral awareness at a very early age -- and it might or might not match the moral framework(s) of the society around them presently. A baby with high linguistic intelligence can acquire language faster than average and may learn to read much sooner, which also pushes moral development, whereas one with low linguistic intelligence may lag in that area but excel in some other way. High intrapersonal, interpersonal, existential, or emotional intelligence can also boost the process. Someone with empathy, telepathy, soul sense, or other direct perception of other people may figure out faster that they have lives and needs of their own -- although some soul perceptions have the opposite effect if they break the illusion of separation that defines so much of mortal existence.
At birth, the brain is more of a seed than a complete structure. It continues to grow and develop over time, in response to the environment and experiences which a child encounters. Infants don't have enough neural connections or observations to gauge complex things like right vs. wrong or priorities of need and timing. These grow in slowly over time. Children first begin to notice things like fair vs. unfair. By age 7-8, most children gain a basic awareness of morality and a reasonable ability to follow most rules most of the time if the environment is safe and consistent. Indeed, one of the early tasks of development is to form secure attachment which is a necessary foundation for gauging the world as a rational and moral place to be. Then adolescence brings the complicated process of creating an adult identity and and a role in society. Interestingly, when people become parents, that leads to another enormous reorganization because it typically situates the new infant at the center of the parent's worldview.
Innocence can also be stolen. A child who grows up in a neglectful, abusive, or otherwise traumatic and chaotic environment will be hindered in development. Things like connection disruption and developmental trauma disorder can mangle the maturation process. Exposed far too early to the harsh parts of the world, such children quickly lose their innocence as they scramble to survive in a hostile and unpredictable environment.
In a healthy environment, people exchange innocence for wisdom and ethics as they grow up. Various frameworks have been proposed for moral development, of which Kohlberg's six stages is a popular example. Not everyone necessarily makes it up the common scales of development, and indeed, some people grow beyond them. Cosmic or transcendental morality, for instance, includes concerns like "Life is precious, so don't destroy the biosphere of a living planet" and "Souls are equal, so don't discriminate against people based on their current body." That's off the top of the most moral scales, and people who function at that level don't fit in well when the society as a whole is one or more levels lower. The effect is dramatically worse if you pack it in or remember it early in life. This is why some societies have safety procedures to recognize baby lamas and support them with an environment appropriate to their development.
Furthermore, there are many ethical systems and decision-making frameworks. People often disagree on what "good" even is, let alone how to get there. A great exercise is to take a set of ethical systems and sit down with a newspaper or list of current issues in the world, then work out how each system would address those issues. Which system best fits your worldview? Are some better with certain types of problems? Which system(s) seem able to handle the widest range of issues effectively? Exercises like this help people to develop ethics and wisdom -- and understand that many different approaches can work. It helps to have a diverse toolbox in a complex world.
If babies are considered innocent, when do people cease to be innocent?
It's a gradual process, not a sudden shift. Also, it occurs at different speeds for different people, depending on their biology, personality, and living conditions.
Babies tend to start out innocent because most humans come into this life with no memory of anything else, no sense of morality, little or no language, and a self-centered worldview with little or no sense of other people as individuals with lives of their own. So right off, there's potential for divergence. In fact, asynchronous development is one hallmark of gifted children. Conversely, delayed or limited development may retain more aspects of innocence longer due to lower capacity to grow beyond it. And some people just seem to have a personality that holds onto innocence, wonder, and simplicity regardless of their age or experience even though they are healthy.
So for instance, a baby born with active farmemory, or even the potential to access glimpses of it as needed, will already know things or learn much faster, which among other effects can cause dramatic differences in moral awareness at a very early age -- and it might or might not match the moral framework(s) of the society around them presently. A baby with high linguistic intelligence can acquire language faster than average and may learn to read much sooner, which also pushes moral development, whereas one with low linguistic intelligence may lag in that area but excel in some other way. High intrapersonal, interpersonal, existential, or emotional intelligence can also boost the process. Someone with empathy, telepathy, soul sense, or other direct perception of other people may figure out faster that they have lives and needs of their own -- although some soul perceptions have the opposite effect if they break the illusion of separation that defines so much of mortal existence.
At birth, the brain is more of a seed than a complete structure. It continues to grow and develop over time, in response to the environment and experiences which a child encounters. Infants don't have enough neural connections or observations to gauge complex things like right vs. wrong or priorities of need and timing. These grow in slowly over time. Children first begin to notice things like fair vs. unfair. By age 7-8, most children gain a basic awareness of morality and a reasonable ability to follow most rules most of the time if the environment is safe and consistent. Indeed, one of the early tasks of development is to form secure attachment which is a necessary foundation for gauging the world as a rational and moral place to be. Then adolescence brings the complicated process of creating an adult identity and and a role in society. Interestingly, when people become parents, that leads to another enormous reorganization because it typically situates the new infant at the center of the parent's worldview.
Innocence can also be stolen. A child who grows up in a neglectful, abusive, or otherwise traumatic and chaotic environment will be hindered in development. Things like connection disruption and developmental trauma disorder can mangle the maturation process. Exposed far too early to the harsh parts of the world, such children quickly lose their innocence as they scramble to survive in a hostile and unpredictable environment.
In a healthy environment, people exchange innocence for wisdom and ethics as they grow up. Various frameworks have been proposed for moral development, of which Kohlberg's six stages is a popular example. Not everyone necessarily makes it up the common scales of development, and indeed, some people grow beyond them. Cosmic or transcendental morality, for instance, includes concerns like "Life is precious, so don't destroy the biosphere of a living planet" and "Souls are equal, so don't discriminate against people based on their current body." That's off the top of the most moral scales, and people who function at that level don't fit in well when the society as a whole is one or more levels lower. The effect is dramatically worse if you pack it in or remember it early in life. This is why some societies have safety procedures to recognize baby lamas and support them with an environment appropriate to their development.
Furthermore, there are many ethical systems and decision-making frameworks. People often disagree on what "good" even is, let alone how to get there. A great exercise is to take a set of ethical systems and sit down with a newspaper or list of current issues in the world, then work out how each system would address those issues. Which system best fits your worldview? Are some better with certain types of problems? Which system(s) seem able to handle the widest range of issues effectively? Exercises like this help people to develop ethics and wisdom -- and understand that many different approaches can work. It helps to have a diverse toolbox in a complex world.
(no subject)
Date: 2025-01-04 08:40 pm (UTC)And by the time I reached the age where I should have taken confirmation classes, I considered myself an agnostic and didn't bother.
Well ...
Date: 2025-01-05 11:42 am (UTC)Re: Well ...
Date: 2025-01-05 06:31 pm (UTC)Re: Well ...
Date: 2025-01-05 08:30 pm (UTC)I was a toddler the first time I got into a serious religious disagreement. Two or three. We were at a funeral, and the church was weird about gender. The men -- and only the men -- were invited to go drink the wine and eat the bread. It was alarming to me. I'd grown up mostly around hippies, and that was probably the first big sign of being in a dangerously sexist society. I remember thinking about all the ghastly things that go wrong because of a bad gender imbalance. I tried to articulate why what the people were doing was dangerous but I didn't really have the vocabulary in English at the time.
Mom carried me outside, and I think she understood what I was getting at. Nobody else has ever believed me that it was more than a toddler's sense of "unfair." Not that I was thinking, "OMFG this is one of THOSE places and I'm going to be stuck cleaning up crotch mistakes for the next CENTURY why did I even come to this clusterfuck planet AAAAAA!!!" Not that I could see a major breakdown in society, and after that I began watching for it everywhere else, and noticing differences between our mostly hippie / nerd / intellectual circle and ... everything else. O_O
The kids who get noticed as gifted are the ones with either logical/mathematical or linguistic as their highest point; for me it's linguistic. But things like existential intelligence commonly go overlooked, or are actively attacked. Hell, I got attacked for being too smart in general, but at least other people knew what words were even if they didn't know all the ones I was using by the time I was four or five. But gender dynamics and sociological malfunctions? Even in college they didn't get it. :/
Re: Well ...
Date: 2025-01-06 01:08 am (UTC)And I noticed that girls were "allowed" to want to grow up to be ballerinas, nurses, elementary school teachers, secretaries, cleaning ladies, waitresses, and beauticians. I wanted to grow up to be an astronaut, but I soon found out that I wasn't even allowed to want to grow up to be a pilot. Only MEN are smart enough to use complicated machinery like airplanes. The female brain can't deal with anything more advanced than a hair dryer or a food mixer. That's why there were all those jokes about "women drivers", who didn't know how to fix their cars, or how to read a map, or how to follow directions on the level of "Turn left at the gas station, onto Poplar Road". Women's tiny little feminine brains shouldn't have to deal with anything more complex than what shade of lipstick to buy; if you overtaxed those brains, the woman might go insane from forcing their minds to contemplate anything complicated. All I could aspire to was a low-paying menial job cleaning up other people's messes, or being a servant ("Type this letter for me", "Make my hair curly", "Cook dinner and wash the dishes.") And one sign of that insanity was to ask WHY women could only do certain types of work. Questioning the Way God Made Us was a sign of neurosis.
As I grew up, and discovered that I could learn to do almost anything I was taught, I found out that nothing had changed. I was majoring in Physics in college, hoping to become a scientist who did space science. I wasn't doing well in physics classes. I went to my faculty advisor, who was the chairman of the Physics department, and he said, "Drop out of my class, and change your major to elementary education. Meet a nice young man and get married and have lots of kids." "It's common knowledge that women aren't smart enough to understand science. You're born to please men sexually and have babies. They can't learn anything more advanced; it's like trying to teach a pig to sing." As I walked out of his office, I turned around and sang "Oink", on a perfect F above middle C. He didn't get it.
Being smart, and verbally clever, and wanting to do things ONLY MEN ARE SUPPOSED TO DO, were among the reasons I was physically assaulted "to beat the weirdness out of me, so nobody else catches it from you, WEIRDO!"
I just learned to be very good at a number of things. Whenever they said, "A woman can't possibly do THIS job... " I demonstrated how good at it I was. It often confused everybody - how can you do that? Only men can do that!" The only thing men can do that I can't is piss standing up.(I tried to learn that trick, but all I ever did was get my socks wet.) I can fix machinery, drive a stick shift, mix sound expertly, make puff pastry, sew clothes for myself, and install a telephone. But I still can't manage to piss standing up.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2025-01-07 02:35 am (UTC)I also observe that a lot of people aren't so much stupid as high on non-popular forms of intelligence/skills. Maybe it would make sense for schools to test for /all/ forms of intelligence?
>>But gender dynamics and sociological malfunctions?<<
I can sometimes grasp stuff like that. But I think you're better at it. (It's hard to measure skill level when there are very few people that can do a certain skill, or level of skill.)