I hereby decree…
Innocence is killing kids!
That’s right. You heard me.
Just what is this childhood innocence? What is this concept of innocence all adults collectively cling to and beset their children with? Honestly, I’m not sure anyone really knows.
Oh, well, surely I must be nuts, right? Why burden young children with the truths of the adult world? Why can’t they enjoy their young lives while they still can, in the bliss of ignorance?
First of all, anyone who believes ignorance is bliss is a fucking idiot. Or, well, it might be blissful, but that doesn’t make it good, you nitwit. Quite the contrary. It puts said ignoramus in a very perilous situation. I mean, if you’re blindfolded, sure, it may be a sort of peace of mind to not see the dangerous things around you, to not know they are there, but it doesn’t change the fact that you’re about to fall into the goddamn Grand Canyon!
When it comes to children, adults really need to remember that old bit about how if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach him to fish, you feed him for life. Instead, parents just keep wanting to give their kids fish rather teaching them to fish, because they make dumb excuses that the kids are too young or that they might fall off the dock and drown (because it never occurred to them to teach the kid to swim either) or stick the hook in their eyes or get eaten by a squirrel or something. You know what is going to happen? The parents will eventually die, and the kid (now quite old, perhaps adult now) has to figure out how to fish without any guidance. Sure enough, he’ll get a hook stuck in his eye, and as he’s walking off the dock, a scary squirrel will startle him and he’ll fall off into the water and drown. Glad you kept him so “innocent”, jerkoffs?
What is comes down to is that most of society just completely has it wrong as far as what the purpose of childhood is. To most people, it’s some sort of carefree latency period, an artificial ideal believed to be a special gift but in fact a glorified waste of time. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying most childhood things are wastes of time or bad. Just that there’s a fence around it. A fence that should not be there.
Children are supposed to learn and grow and absorb the environment around them. They are supposed to see what the adults around them do and copy it, because that’s the natural way that the young of a species learn how to behave, not through holier-than-thou dictation sans demonstration. When you go out of your way to hide the real world from kids, you stifle their learning at best, but most likely damage them for life. We have much of the world to show for it, as they extol the damaging way children are dealt with like the highest divine entity.

Right on Kat! I can’t help but quote Julian for the 10 billionth time:
“Innocence is just ignorance in a frilly pink dress.”