Naiveté
Naiveté: The state
or quality of being naïve; innocence, artlessness, childlikeness, simplicity, ingenuousness, guilelessness, lack of guile, unsophistication,
lack of sophistication, unworldliness, naturalness, candour. Oxford Dictionary
Richard: Naiveté is so vital to
freedom. This is because even the strictest application of moralistic and ethicalistic injunctions will never lead to the clean clarity of the
purity of living the perfection of the infinitude of this material universe. Purity is an actual condition – intrinsic to this universe –
that a human being can tap into by pure intent. Pure intent can be activated with earnest attention paid to the state of naiveté. To be naïve
is to be virginal, unaffected, unselfconsciously artless ... in short: ingenuous. Naiveté is a much-maligned word, having the common
assumption that it implies gullibility. Nevertheless, to be naïve means to be simple and unsophisticated.
Pride is derived from an intellect inured to naïve innocence; to
such an intellect, to be guileless appears to be gullible, stupid. In actuality, one has to be gullible to be sophisticated, to be wise in the
ways of the real world. The ‘worldly-wise’ realists are not in touch with the purity of innocence; they readily obey the peremptory decrees
of the cultured sophisticates. A sample of such decrees are: ‘I didn’t come down in the last shower’, or ‘I wasn’t born yesterday’,
or ‘You’ve got to be tough to survive in the real world’, or ‘It’s dog eat dog out there’ ... and so on. Such people are said to
have ‘lost their innocence’. Human beings have not ‘lost their innocence’ ... they never had it in the first place.
Innocence is something entirely new; it has never existed in human
beings before. It is an evolutionary break-through to come upon innocence. It is a mutation of the human brain. Naiveté is a necessary
precursor to invoke the condition of innocence. One surely has to be naïve to contemplate the profound notion that this universe is benign,
friendly. One needs to be naïve to consider that this universe has an inherent imperative for well-being to flourish; that it has a built-in
benevolence available to one who is artless, without guile.
To the realist – the ‘worldly-wise’ – this appears like
utter foolishness. After all, life is a ‘vale of tears’ and one must ‘make the best of a bad situation’ because one ‘can’t change
human nature’; and therefore ‘you have to fight for your rights’. This derogatory advice is endlessly forthcoming; the put-down of the
universe goes on ad nauseam, wherever one travels throughout the world. This universe is so enormous in size – infinity being as enormous as
it can get – and so magnificent in its scope – eternity being as magnificent as it can get – how on earth could anyone believe for a
minute that it is all here for humans to be forever miserable and malicious in?
It is foolishness of the highest order to believe it to be impossible to be free.
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