Innocence is „beeing shameless“.
Well,of course I don’t mean the common connotation of „shameless“ society brought us up with due to Christianity’s influence.
I don’t mean the absence of morals, of respect or having 50 ex-partners by the age of 25.
I mean the absence of acquired bad feelings about natural things such as feelings, perceptions, emotions. (It pains me a bit to feel the urge to explain that, but I can’t trust in people’s ability to get me the right way.)
Actually I consider that to be more fitting to the christian beliefs that still influence our surrounding – the purity of what was „before“ our world now, according to the bible, was a place without guilt, shame or sins.
When Eva took the apple in paradise that would „make her like god – you will be able to decide right from wrong“, she chose the ability to feel shame, but she also chose the ability to use her own mind and judge things. The bible tells us nothing apart from Kant’s theories and I dare to say that Kant, as a faithful christian, saw these hints.
(We could now discuss if the christian god is a malicious or a very caring god due to his attempts to keep the humans from gaining knowledge, but I am not a very christian person but on the other hand way too old to talk about religions in a bad way, so I will just leave this part blank. I try to talk about the theory, not the believe-it-or-not-part.)
We can find this tension between shame and sin on the one, purity and innocence on the other hand in most of the religions, especially in the pre-christian ones.
It is the most logical thing to me that these subjects and the fragile balance between them always has fascinated humanity (and obviously still does, hence me writing about it)
The fascinating thing for me is the fact that only the societies/ religions influenced by the (catholic) church consider the apple/ knowledge to be a sin and have therefore problems with sexuality, feelings and morals, but we all knew that it’s mostly the people instrumentalizing theories and not the theories theirselves that cause bad things so why shouldn’t I search for ancient knowledge in religious books?
Another example?
Lucifer. (latin „lux ferre“ – „He who bears the light“).
The fire, the eternal flame of wisdom, stolen from god(s) and given to mankind.
The lightbearer (Enlightenment, doen’t that ring a bell?), doomed for making the humans godlike.
We can find this motif in nearly all („western“) mythologies, no matter if pre-christian or not.
Lucifer Prometheus, Loki,.. - these mythological lightbearers are described as rather bad than good characters (bad for the gods, hence good for humanity’s enlightenment) – the christian interpretation is the worst one, though.
Also, I can see a deeply sexual and innocence-linked meaning in all this.
Prometheus is the morning star, the greek pendant to the roman Venus.
He brings the light, as Venus, as the sign for female fertility and sexuality, gives birth to life.
I could go on with ancient symbols and mythologies for at least ten more pages, did i mention the Pentagram yet? Golden section, search for perfection, da Vinci, Venus, Enlightenment.
I won’t write more, I have to go to bed.
The connections are everywhere, it is unbelievably fascinating for me to see the ancient thoughts mingle with thoughts from the age of enlightenment and our „modern“ society and philosophies.
And: I do not only think about sex while writing this, yet sex is the perfect example for what I’m trying to say- Is there something more innocent than two bodies converging like two different kinds of honey, colliding like waves of the oceans?
Our life is full of opposites.
In the dephts of night our fire is the brightest light,
and in the morning sun we are nothing but ashes and bloodwinds.
How can I break this circle? I must become the flame. Not the burning tree.
I.S. 20.04.2009



