An Innocent Mind
It seems innocence is freedom from the burden of experience. A freedom from the accumulated residual memories of pleasures and sorrows. It is the memory of the experience that corrupts, not the experiencing itself. Therefore knowledge, which is the burden of the past, corrupts.
From this accumulation there is continuous effort to become. Obviously this becoming is also another corrupting factor.
An innocent mind, a fresh mind, is a mind which is not cluttered up with the known. An innocent mind is a mind which functions in the unknown, and dying to the known is the door to the unknown. The unknown is not measurable by the known. Time cannot measure that which is beyond time. When we try to measure something which is not measurable….it seems we get caught up in knowledge and beliefs.
An innocent mind isn't a mind that lacks experiences/information (as in a child), but a mind that doesn't carry over the marks of those experiences (as in child-like).
From this accumulation there is continuous effort to become. Obviously this becoming is also another corrupting factor.
An innocent mind, a fresh mind, is a mind which is not cluttered up with the known. An innocent mind is a mind which functions in the unknown, and dying to the known is the door to the unknown. The unknown is not measurable by the known. Time cannot measure that which is beyond time. When we try to measure something which is not measurable….it seems we get caught up in knowledge and beliefs.
An innocent mind isn't a mind that lacks experiences/information (as in a child), but a mind that doesn't carry over the marks of those experiences (as in child-like).
Comments (29)
Whether hung upside down naked on a steeple, or cleaving, white-knuckled, ropeless, to a shear cliff, or lost, neck high, down a well. It is no time or the right time to cur(s)e oneself. It would be so easy to leap if one weren't bound, less easy to grow too cold.
We might venture that no animal is as cur(s)ed quite like us. The censorious mind, deranged driver of ego and the executive mind, augur of all pasts and futures, arbiter of motion, has given us the task of digging a grave or a foundation for what is to come.
Go easy, censor. Live and let live.
I think i can understand that many have an anxious desire to post things born out of a kind of reactionary anger and depression, and if your post is one of them then you can ignore this message.
But if your post was an invitation for a healthy dialogue, though it doesn't seem like it was (or maybe i am at fault for not seeing it), then please make it clear in any future posts, so one doesn't have to waste their energy and time responding to silly reactions. Thank you.
Edit: Also, please keep it contextual to OP.
It seems only a mind that isn't Innocent, or doesn't understand what it is, will make a statement like the one quoted above.
To clarify, an innocent mind isn't a foolish mind, contrary to popular belief (example quoted above). But a mind that understands the correct use of energy and time.
Ah, but only a corrupt mind is stingy with their energy and time.
Innocent mind sounds like an oxymoron to me. The more mind forms the more moral responsibility applies to it. What's more innocent than a fire or a plague?
Nope. Only a corrupt mind can't understand the difference between right and wrong use of resources
This is the last response you will ever get from OP. Good luck..
Not sure if your post is an invitation to discuss or simply something you felt like posting.
Sorry, you strike me as overly critical and what you are attempting to describe is unclear and seemingly in part contradictory.
Implicit knowledge cannot help leave a mark on the mind as it develops. There are dysfunctional minds, unbalanced minds, depressed minds et cetera but a corrupt mind sounds like a self-interested immoral mind (like a sociopath) that exploits knowledge for power at the expense of the well being of others. Corruption is a judgement made from an a particular point of view, relative to a set of values. It would help to ground your generalities through real life particulars, or imagined characters.
Or maybe on par with your abstraction, a corrupt mind is related to the maladaptive constraint of ego boundary, as is with depressed minds, where one cannot move forward constructively due to the emotively charged content of the past. One cannot step out of the bounds of the known and is thus limited by a fear mediated projection of the world (seeing through shit tinted spectacles).
You can ignore me if you like, if it is good to avoid depressed (perhaps corrupt) minds.
Maybe i will try one more time.
By corruption OP is pointing to our inability to meet the present with fresh and clear eyes. We meet it through the lens of the past. Knowledge in it's entirety is the past, and the past in it's entirety is nothing but knowledge..Knowledge is all of what we know, the known.
By knowledge Op is pointing to all the information we have either accumulated or has been dumped on us. It includes but is not limited to how we were brought up, what we have read, all that we have experienced consciously and unconsciously, our conditionings, our beliefs, our affiliations etc.,
Therefore OP is saying, a mind that is living and meeting life through the background/lens of this corruption, which is knowledge, isn't an innocent mind. It's a scarred mind. It carries all the scars of yester years.
There are countless example that can used to clarify this. The best example is you. (whoever the inquirer is) You can observe yourself and your life, and your reactions, to arrive into the above insights. I could write essays on these examples but won',t since the necessity of doing so hasn't been established. Nevertheless, let's look at couple. If a person hurts you and you meet the person again, then you will see him or her through your past hurt. How do you relate to people? Through the images you create of them, don't you? Don't you profile people like "you strike me as overly critical"? Though you cannot really rationally substantiate what you say, yet you look at them through the images you have created of them. What is stereotyping? Isn't it looking at something or someone through your beliefs, prejudices, generalizations, or information you have accumulated about them? The person or the thing you are looking at may or may not fall in the box you have mentally created, yet does that stop you from stereotyping? So on and so forth.....
So if a mind is afflicted by all this then it's an unhealthy,corrupt and damaged mind. Such a mind is violent, competitive, confused, a conflicted mind that won't be able to attribute true values......like the other poster on this this thread who came here to play games. Hope all this clarifies.
Yes, you're much clearer but your value judgement using the strange words "corrupt" or "innocent" don't really mean anything because according to your language all minds are corrupt and innocent.
You haven't adequately fleshed out the difference between these two types of mind.
The OP has always been clear. Any lack of clarity is/was in the recipient's corrupted mind. Perhaps a reactionary block towards comprehension.
Furthermore, t's not a value judgement, but an accurate designation/representation of facts, using the available linguistic limitations. The OP has done it's part. Any further investigation has to be undertaken by the listener, with due diligence, if they wish to go deeper into the matter, or not. Thank you.
I suppose that goes both ways though. You can't really be the objective judge of your own mind. The esteem you grant yourself is otherworldly if so.
That's where the heavy lifting is. Objectivity and clarity don't come easy. It will depend on how innocent the mind is.
The innocence, clarity, and objectivity will show in the expertise of one, when he or she is communicating, and helps "clear up" things for the listener. But in order to perceive and acknowledge this, one also needs an Innocent mind. Our inability to appreciate the gifts of other people is essentially a failure of our own intelligence, for the prerequisite for appreciation is comprehension. I think i am done for today. Thanks again.
What we call stereotyping is part of how our minds work. It’s not possible to not do this. Perhaps your ideas about innocence are, well, innocent. Perhaps you intentionally attempt to mislead or corrupt because your mind has been corrupted. So there exists two boxes in my mind. A box where you are innocent. A box where you are corrupt. And a box for the unknown. Wait, that’s three boxes. Anyway, more information is required to determine which box you belong to.
Unfortunately, you can’t tell me which box you belong to if you’re innocent because if you’re innocent then you are innocent of the required knowledge. If you’re corrupt then you’ll conceal the corruption because you’re corrupt. The box for the unknown is where you currently reside.
It may be interesting to discuss it if someone has another take on it.
Right, so your initial post wasn't an invitation to discuss, Thanks for the clarification.
The op is more interested in accurately representing what's being said, than in playing patty cake. These accurate representations may sting, but they bring out the truth in the obvious reactionary posts/games that a corrupt mind plays. Which are available for observation, if the inquirer wishes.
His religious-like reverence for the * Unknown * suggests that it's more like the former.
This part is telling...
Quoting skyblack
The problem here is that how can you "attribute true values" if knowledge is corruption. He defines Knowledge as "all the information we have either accumulated or has been dumped on us. It includes but is not limited to how we were brought up, what we have read, all that we have experienced consciously and unconsciously, our conditionings, our beliefs, our affiliations etc."[/I] Somehow [i]true values exist independent of all that – in a cloud of unknowing or the like perhaps – and only people like skyblack have access to this sacred place.
It looks like everyone is playing a kind of patty cake, from the ants growing leaf mold to the golfers of the PGA hitting little balls across picturesque landscapes, to the anonymous and abstruse dialogues of this philosophy forum. Forms arising and falling away, transacting agents with there great and little dramas. Does it really matter what happens, as if there was any real control beyond the little self's daily decisions.
If a bear eating salmon in a river is an example of a kind of mind corruption (conditioned knowledge) all I can do is shrug my shoulders. I would much rather be like a bear salmon fishing, with no relationship to a past or future self that engages a ceaseless anxiety, supposing that is the case. There is just life in motion, pain and pleasure which comes and goes, no concept of death or something to die.
On the contrary, the bear (wrong example. not only the wrong end of the stick, but it's the wrong stick) is alive! It is true to what nature has given. It's brimming with integrity. The bear isn't corrupted by the conditioned knowledge of humans, and the pathetic reactionary responses to life, the stench of which can be detected from far away. I am afraid, as it stands, the dream of living like a bear is nothing but a pipe dream, coming out from a corrupt mind that isn't able to face it's own corruption....a mind that is common to all humanity.
Apparently not, since we now know that a bear isn't corrupted by conditioned knowledge.
Quoting skyblack
But are you included or excluded as one who has a corrupted mind? I would be surprised if you alone could make that designation.
But in your previous comment you were using a bear and it's actions as an example of conditioned knowledge. OP corrected the error in his response, and added that note in parentheses. What you now know is the corrected version.
I see you edited your comment and added the above while i was typing the response.
In response to your question: This is something op had mentioned in one of his earliest posts after joining this forum. The first signs of a failure of intelligence and affection is to fixate on the author/poster rather than the topic/what they are saying. This shift from intelligent responses to emotional reactions, along with a fixation on the person rather than the issue, is a neurotic effect of a corrupt mind.
But your response is not driven by an emotional reaction? Not like an innocent bear. You're keep going on and on about how everyone has a corrupted mind... it stands to reason you're not excluded.
Then you also project an assumption (not conditioned by corrupting knowledge) about what it is like to be a bear.
No need to reply. But your poetry is kind of interesting, though dour, uncharitable, melancholy and nihilistic. The corruption has moved into my bowels. I must seek a toilet.
In interest of any reader,
regarding, "Then you also project an assumption (not conditioned by corrupting knowledge) about what it is like to be a bear: :
In OP's very first thread in the forum which can be seen here , a distinction had been drawn between two kinds of knowledge viz, the practical and the psychological. That is, between the non-corrupting and the corrupting knowledge. The distinction was again touched in this thread Perhaps a look at how that distinction has been drawn might help in understanding OP's usage of the word knowledge. You might then be able to understand where the knowledge of the bear fits in. Thank you for your charitable posts.
Act like a bear and fight or flee.
Quoting skyblack
In this case you chose to flee, however, you’re not a bear, you’re apparently an intellectually dishonest human being who lacks the integrity to answer a very relevant question.
If OP is corrupt then whatever OP says is corrupting.