Naivete Envy

I had a few thoughts as I was mulling this over.

Many adults equate innocence with ignorance, and value children for what children haven't learned yet. In most cases this seems to be a form of envy.

Take Santa Claus. Adults would like to believe in magical tales like Santa. So they live vicariously through children even as they deceive them and cheer on the child's misplaced faith in the deception.

But this also holds over into "solutions" to the world's problems. Some part of us wants to believe that nothing comes at a cost, that good intentions are enough, and that there are no unintended consequences.

Adults are aware enough that this isn't the case. But they'd like to think it were so. So they cheer the Samantha Smiths and Severn Suzukis patronizingly and then do nothing.

Though there is one thing more dangerous that patronizing neglect, its those politicians who do believe that nothing comes at a cost, good intentions are enough, and that there are no unintended consequences; these are the ones who tell us "we will be greeted as liberators," before they begin a course of destruction.

Dante