INNOCENCE

Innocence is an artificial condition. It doesn't exist in the wild. It's only use is in being taken. That's when it's most valuable, when someone spots it and decides to take it.

Innocence only exists when people who definitely aren't innocent shield uninformed humans from reality. Which usually requires money, or something else thought to be valuable. Religious people often work within a frame-work of quasi-innocence, where they know the meek aren't really going to inherit the earth, but they do their best to make the uninformed think this will be so.

The reason I know so much about innocence is because unlike the majority of human adults, I remember what it was like to be young and very, very uninformed. It's my experience that the majority of adults act as if they were born knowing everything. Not me.

I don't have anything against innocence. What you or I think about how some humans create situations where other humans are kept unaware of what douche bags the rest of us really are, isn't important or useful. Innocence is refreshing, and just like most things that are refreshing, an awful lot goes into creating and sustaining it. And it never lasts. But like when my wife puts on her old cheerleader outfit, you can have some fun faking it.