Innocence: the Child | Archetypical Philosophies 1
a Short Essay for the Modern Existentialist
1 | Innocence: the Garden of Beginnings
Imagine that, just now, you’ve opened your eyes for the very first time. Can you see the sights? The sounds? The bright, vibrant colors of a brand-new world… spinning and swirling all around you?
We begin as the Innocent: as Children of this Earth—seeing, hearing, feeling, touching. Taking in our brand-new everything for the very first time. We know nothing… at least, at first. But then, we grow, and we learn… through the things which we touch and see, and the things which we’re taught and told to believe.
As the Innocent—as Children—we believe that there are two kinds of people in this world:
The kids, and the grown-ups.
There are those who are like us—young, and who know nothing… yet. And then, there are those who are like them—those who’re older, and who know everything.
At first, we believe and trust that the world is as we see it—that things have always been this way. We believe what we’re taught—that what we’re told is true… is true, and is real. We believe in the inherence of adult knowledge: of what’s right, what’s just, and what’s good. But, as we learn and grow, our Innocence begins to crack and crumble, and the cold and uncaring reality of our world begins to spill in—to seep through those cracks and breaks. No longer can we continue to believe that the world is stagnant and safe—an ever-constant, unchanging place. A place which has always been the same. We learn, after all, that our world is a place that’s constantly changing, and that time…
Time… can never turn back.
And, once we’ve arrived in this place—once the walls around our Eden have begun to crack and to break…
Neither can we.
2 | Onward
Where one philosophy has broken, a new one emerges to take its place. A person, after all, cannot have no mindset at all. Everyone interacts with the world that they see—and, therefore, necessarily has a method: a way which they choose to live their life.
For someone to say that they have no philosophy… is a mindset—an attitude. A philosophy in itself.
Where we go next, then, must be decided here—at this point. The walls are breaking—fractured, and crumbling. A whole new world lies beyond it—a world filled with terrifying possibility; teeming with the vast and arcane unknown. Will you choose to cower in fear and to bury your head? To embrace Complacency—attempting to retreat into your fast-fading Innocence—and deny that the wall could be crumbling at all? Or will you rush to the fore as one of the many Faithful, to guard and defend that wall against whatever pounds against its stones? Against whatever mysterious evil could be lurking just on the other side?
Philosophy: a mindset. An attitude. The way that a person chooses to see the world, and therefore to approach living their life.
Αρχή | archí: origin
Τύπος | týpos: form
An Archetypical Philosophy is the bare-bones, logical basis of a person’s mindset or attitude, inferred from observation of the way in which they choose to live their life.