Naive — ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from French naïve, feminine of naïf, from Latin nativus ‘native, natural.’

Innocent — ORIGIN Middle English : from Old French, or from Latin innocent– ‘not harming,’ from in– ‘not’ + nocere ‘to hurt.’

Original — ORIGIN early 16th cent.: from French origine, from Latin origo, origin-, from oriri ‘to rise.’

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The most naive and hurtful belief: to equate naivete and innocence.

Nothing is harder to learn than innocence: innocence is unnatural. Innocence is height. You could say its unnaturalness is supernaturalness.

Should we stop wanting innocence, then, if innocence is not a preexisting fact but an accomplishment or aspiration? Does something have to be an is before we accept it as an ought?

Height is unnatural; depth is cruel. Innocence is an ideal indispensable to the process of human being, to rise from the depths, and by the depths, and never losing contact with the depths as we ascend to humanity over what humanity has been, which is inhuman.

Perhaps if we learn the truth about innocence and naivete we can stop doing violence to ourselves and to our children. We can overcome the shame of who we are and have been by cultivating faith in who we can become.