The pair of concepts
William Blake illustrates in his Songs of Innocence and Experience
have become an embedded part of western culture. While they retain
their poetic mystical quality there appears to be more than just
literary appeal to the notion. There is some palpable truth to the
poetic innocence and experience and a clear distinction between the
poetic notion and the common use of the words. I use these two words
in this essay not as the dictionary would define them but in the way
that Blake paints them. Innocence and experience are states of being
rather than a descriptive term based on a specific context.
Due to our lack of
scientific understanding as to the difference of these poetic
definitions of innocence and experience we make lazy linguistic
assumptions as to their properties based much more on the dictionary
definitions of innocence and experience than any potential physical
cause. There is also a strong trend between the obtaining of real
life experience and losing ones innocence, and vice-versa, those
without much experience of life tend to be those we would describe as
innocents in the general poetic sense. Most human adults have lost
their innocence, most young children still have it.
The more I probe these
concepts however the more I find that the simple gaining of life
experience is insufficient alone to cause the effect of becoming
experienced in the poetic sense. Certainly the gaining of life
experience is a help to the transition from innocence to experience
in humans but it is not the route cause of the change. The two main
observations I would use to demonstrate the separation of poetic
experience and of dictionary experience are the characteristics of
animals and the characters of people with conditions that affect the
brain in a certain way such as autism or Down's syndrome. The complex
workings of the brain and my somewhat limited data sample mean I
cannot make any assured sweeping claims however I have found that
these two groups of beings are resistant to the loss of innocence.
The gaining of life experience has little to no effect on their
qualities which make them innocents.
The reason that I find
these concepts so fascinating is that they are so ambiguous yet so
palpable. I can fairly easily categorize a being as an innocent or as
experienced after basically just meeting them. Another thing that
strikes me very hard is that I am fairly inept at relating to the
emotional states of most other people. This is a common facet of
autism and nothing striking or unusual. What is noticeable and
unusual is that I am excellent at relating to animals and far better
than usual with mentally atypical people who I seem to more
intuitively understand. Obviously being somewhat atypical myself, the
ease of relating to similar people is fairly understandable however
the fact that it extends to cover animals as well makes it more
interesting. All the groups that are made up of innocents are the
groups I am above average at empathizing with yet those I classify as
experienced I am intuitively poor at relating to.
There is a certain
simplicity and honesty to the actions of innocents that in many
contexts the experienced person doesn't accept because they are no
longer able to operate under those conditions. The difference between
an innocent and an experienced being seems to be most manifest in how
they relate to other beings and to their environment. The innocents
have no barrier between their thoughts and feelings and the
expression of their body, while the experienced do. It is not quite
as simple as that however, as innocents are capable of lying and
deceit as well as the experienced. The difference goes more to the
motive behind the deceit rather than the act itself as to what would
distinguish an innocent from an experienced being.
Beyond the link between
the words experienced and experienced another cultural misconception
we seem to have about these poetic states of being is that they are
linked to sex. Again, it is the fact that animals remain innocents
despite growing old and having sex that rebuke this notion. You might
argue that animals don't count as they cannot really become
experienced in the way most humans do and as such should not be used
as a way to show how the change might occur in people through what
they do and don't do. My counter argument to this is that animals
posses all the same identifiable and relatable properties of
innocence that innocent humans do. It would be arrogant to assume
that just because they don't become experienced that they are removed
from the possibility of being innocents or being part of the same
system. Humans are the odd ones out, we are the species breaking the
mould and the most likely situation is that innocence is the norm and
experience is a by-product of our advanced reflective and imaginative
capabilities combined with our acute self awareness.
Thinkers and
philosophers like Koestler and Schopenhauer put forward very
persuasive arguments that the human condition is highly flawed. We
are destined to live a life of internal conflict, paradox and
contradiction. Fundamentally the problem is that we have two ways to
deal with a situation, we have the emotional intuitive subconscious
response which evolved first and then we have the conscious brain
which is far slower but much more capable of logical deductions and
reasoning. Most higher animals have both these modes as well however
the latter is undeveloped compared to humans and works in harmony
with the other system. For humans however our conscious reasoning is
so highly developed that it stops working in harmony with the more
emotional part of the brain. Certainly it is this advanced reasoning
conciseness that has allowed us to conquer the planet and live in
luxury however I believe it is what is costing us our innocence, in
in more understandably terms, much of our potential happiness.
Humans are aware of
there own mortality, we can see ourselves from the perspective of
other people, we can plan and imagine and then fall victim to our own
expectation. All of these difficult little problems and many many
more come up in our conscious mind which does something (contort?) to
our subconscious. The solutions to these imagined situations and
conceptual problems are essentially in an incomprehensible language
to the emotional part of the mind and as such any solutions it may
have are not useful.
I mentioned before a
barrier between what is inside of an experienced person and what they
let come out of them which is not present in the same way for an
innocent being. I believe this barrier is the result of becoming
aware of mental contradictions that ultimately force people to act in
discordance with how they feel.
I have used the
innocence of animals to refute sex and life experience as causes of
the loss of innocence and shall do so again with violence which is
clearly one of the greatest accelerators of the change from innocence
to experience in humans. The reason why violence between animals in
the wild has no effect on their innocence yet does appear to have an
affect on the rate of change in humans comes back to the motive
behind the actions as I mentioned when talking about deceit. The
motives for violence between animals in the wild is survival,
competing for a mate, defending against attack or for feeding
purposes. These are pure, honest motives behind the more extreme
acts. Outside of these situations animals are very peaceful creatures
which default to the nice setting much like a bubble defaults to a
spherical shape – it is the the easiest thing to do.
Violence in humanity is
far less often for these pure honest reasons. Even when one side of
the conflict is fighting for pure reasons such as survival, the other
side is invariably not. The older humanity has become the more our
acts of violence have deviated from pure natural motives. Most
violence is now born out of hatred or greed which are both impure
motives and somewhat the result of conflict between our reasoning and
emotion. Animals don't really have greed or hate in the way humans
do, they will fear something they feel they have some reason too but
they won't hate it in a consuming manner. It is the hate behind the
violence rather than the violence that contributes to the loss of
innocence.
You may say that
animals can be greedy but again it is different. With humans we
imagine having something and generate a want based on that imagined
situation. With animals they know they want food already and so given
the opportunity can be prone to what we perceive as greedy eating. It
is almost the complete opposite effect going on, the animal being
greedy has failed to imagine what might be enough food as it is not a
situation they are overly familiar with or instinctively programmed
for. They are failing to use foresight and thus gorge themselves, a
greedy human has imagined a want and then sets about obtaining it,
often well beyond actual need.
Although a fascinating
subject I am not sure quite what purpose it serves. While I find
innocents easier to spend time with I would not suggest either
experience or innocence as the better state. I do think there is a
high chance that the loss of innocence makes many things harder for
humans to cope with and as such is a strong contributing factor in
things like depression. Even if this were the case though I am not
sure it has a solution. Experience seems bound to what it is that
makes us human and is not something easily altered. I am not even
sure which I would class myself as despite claiming an ability to
quickly judge others. The concepts of innocence and experience should
at least help us understand a little more about the workings of the
brain.
I suspect I shall be
returning to this subject as this is just an introduction. It is a
relatively new idea to me and my thoughts are still somewhat immature
and chaotic. I have been somewhat limited in the scope of innocence
and experience thus far in this essay yet have been finding glimpses
of it all over the place. It was finding it in music about a year ago
that first sparked the notion that there might be more to innocence
and experience than simple poetic elegance.
Mozart and Beethoven
are widely regarded as the two giants of classical/romantic music. I
had been a lover Beethoven for a while but found Mozart to be far
less engaging. My experience with this kind of thing is that it takes
a little while to appreciate something and as such you have to put in
some effort to be able to enjoy the greatest works of art. It is hard
to put my finger on why it is the case but it was pretty clear to me
when comparing the works of the two composers more directly to each
other (with the aim of understanding why Mozart was so similarly
revered as Beethoven yet failed to rewards me similarly) that they
were the musical equivalent of Songs of Innocence and Experience with
Mozart being the innocent and Beethoven being the experienced.
Mozart has a kind of
immediate overbearing euphoric joy to almost all of his works, they
resonate with the same kind of purity and simplicity that can be
found in the languages of the innocent. Beethoven on the other hand
has more sinister works that are contain more trickery and illusion.
A different way to phrase it might be that the music of Mozart is
correct with respect to nature and harmony as if Mozart simply saw
the most pristine and perfect musics that already existed, like the
laws of logic, and then copied them down. Beethoven also saw this
perfect music but instead of copying it he contorted it to his own
desires, breaking the rules where he could see a way. After having
put the effort into getting Mozart I do fully appreciate his genius
and can see why he is regarded alongside Beethoven but my preference
for the latter remains unchanged. They both totally got music yet
they did completely different things with that understanding.
From what I know of
Mozart there is a high chance he was autistic and therefore according
to my theory was likely to be an innocent himself. This muddies the
waters rather than pointing towards anything insightful, as does the
fact that I relate better to innocents yet prefer the taint of
experience in my music. There is speculation Beethoven was also
autistic, as I am sure there is for most historic figures, and I very
much doubt it is as simple as innocents create innocent art etc. even
assuming he wasn't autistic. I have discussed the presence of
innocence and experience imprinted on music just as a tangible
example of the kinds of place they can be found and not to make any
deductions. While it may make the subject more interesting it also
makes it that much more complicated and mysterious.
All I can really say on
the matter at the moment is that there does seem to be something real
and tangible that can differentiate between two general states of
being. These states of being can be seen in the actions, expressions
and communications of all kinds of higher animal. Such is the nature
of the distinction between the two types of being that we can assign
these states to abstracts and inanimates. Perhaps this ability to
assign states of being to things like music is a fallacy and part of
the human urge to find patterns. Perhaps it is little more than
languages like French assigning a gender to each word. Even if this
link is spurious it does at least give weight to the notion that the
concepts of innocence and experience are recognizable, a little like
how we are inclined to see faces in clouds and other random
formations.
I think it is possible
to alternate between occupying an innocent state and an experienced
one but I think for the most part you are in one state or the other
with fleeting moments outside of the norm. I think this is the case
because the difference between innocence and experience is distinct
yet has some characteristics of a spectrum. This again may be a
linguistic bias with the links to the dictionary definitions of
innocence and experience where you are easily able to be more or less
of one than another being.
I have little evidence
for the key distinction between innocence and experience being based
on internal contradictions unique to the advanced human brain and
self awareness. I spent much of my time musing the subject with no
theory on this matter at all, simply driven by the feeling they were
real properties. My belief in this theory simply comes from how well
it fits with what little I do know of the brain and my various
observations while investigating the matter. I have a need to explain
what I encounter and observe and I find my explanation thus far on
the matter of innocence and experience to be satisfactory, if not
complete nor even necessarily correct.
