Beyond the Age of Innocence

I wrote this on September 28, 2003. I decided to post this now because of a commentary discussion on innocence over at McGoo's place.


Our planet is defiled. I'm not talking about the evils of Chloro-fluoro carbon kidnapping oxygen atoms from its two siblings from within random sunbathing ozone families. Nor is this about the broadcasting of Polychlorinated Biphenyl heavy metal to the fishes, the paving of public pathways with cigarette butts nor the negligent infestation of politicians into our society. No, this is about me polluting the environment with me.

The polarization of our public, the greed of any of the dozens of warmongering administrations around the world manufacturing war on the planet, the individual wars perpetrated by any of the selected criminals against society and the intolerance of one against another for simple reasons of idealism, has cause me to disengaged. I don't really remember becoming disconnected. It just sort of happened. I don't know exactly how it happened, but it did. Furthermore, I don't know how to fix myself. I know too much to merely be plugged back into the socket of freedom and the pursuit of happiness. Life should be simpler.

I remember as a kid, the innocence of playing in dirt and being punished when I collected it on my shoes and brought it into the house. Even the stowing of bugs in mason jars, cruel as it may be, knowing that the insects will be dead in a few hours (regardless of the holes punched in the lid and of being fed the universal insect food of lettuce), had some measure of innocence. It's what boys do. That sort of thing is beautiful compared to the soil samples collected in adulthood.

In my adult collection jars are samples of fear, disgust, apathy, guilt, apprehension, procrastination, mistrust and confusion. There are more jars filled with the vile substances of adulthood. I can't simply stow them away like unpopular art held in the back rooms of the Smithsonian's version of Area 51. It doesn't exist.

There are other jars, too. Some jars are delicately filled with the loves of living, the desires of ambition, the charities of compassion and so on. I only wish that I hadn't stored them in adult proof containers, which are very difficult to open once sealed away.

Is it really possible to know too much?

Whomever said to "make love, not war" could not have known anything about real love. Rather, the ideal of love. The true fascination of simply stating the words, "I love you," is hollow, I believe. In some respects making love and making war are synonymous. Both are equal in their pain. Maybe, its the love in war that causes the pain and love is the true culprit. The love of money, policy, ideals, religion, etc. are the root causes and the love of the victims of war, the pain.

Is it the cold steel wedges of dissension that is propagated by our governments, which cause the great divisions within our societies? Are ideals of environmentalism, abortion, religion worth all the needless bickering? Is the want of having something as perfect as that which the neighbor next door possesses, worth all the lying, cheating, stealing and subsequent killing? Must we always have an opponent to show ourselves better than the next guy? Surely, we are not so competitive that we choose opponents for the sheer benefit of advancing our own acceptance. Surely not.

Why did I have to pay such close attention to the sinister evils of existence? I watched them like the train wrecks that they are and learned to place the spoiled leftovers in neat little unbreakable packages with neat little indelible labels and stacked them in neat little incarcerated rows somewhere in my minds own Area 51. I only wish that I had cataloged the jars with some version of the Dewey Decimal System before I began stacking them. The only jars I wish to open are the unlabeled ones. The ones stored during my years of innocence, before I knew that properly adhered labels of categorical recall had importance.

Wouldn't it be easy to go to the closet named Age of Innocence, select the "Muddy Feet" jar, open it, then track the contents all over the house with the only consequences being the responsibility of having to clean it up and then being sent to your room.

Yes, it would be, except that I can't seem to find that jar and that I know too much. I know too much and lack the restraint to keep it to myself. The government should have some agency like the EPA to come clean up after me. Now that I think of it, they do have such an agency. They call it the Department of Corrections (or rather, the Department of Collections). Hopefully, the DOC doesn't have a neat little unbreakable jar, which is neatly and indelibly labeled "Grackle," ready to be filled with my spoiled leftovers ready to be neatly incarcerated in some Area 51 closet named Age of Adult Awareness.

Maybe the best I can hope for is that my jar has enough holes punched in its lid and that I have plenty of lettuce to eat.

"One of the indictments of civilizations is that happiness and intelligence are so rarely found in the same person." - William Feather (1908-1976)