Do you think America's Puritanical roots has corrupted the true meaning of the words ';pure'; and ';innocence?

I keep seeing people confusing naivet茅 for innocence. And lack of knowledge for innocence, an a lack of experience for purity. For example. You are no longer ';pure'; when you've had sex. Because sex is ';impure'; and now you know sex, you are impure. Or knowledge of evil in the world ';takes your innocence'; I find it hard to believe that moral corruption is inevitable, and based on external factors, an not internal factors. Your thoughts?Do you think America's Puritanical roots has corrupted the true meaning of the words ';pure'; and ';innocence?
I don't know about this ';America's Puritanical roots'; but I agree with you.





Hahahahaha.....





If anyone is innocent, WHY are they born into this world? Those came, possess the seeds of earthly attributes.





Sex is impure? Hahaha! We humans are born from parental sex!





Knowledge of evil? If you don't know, how do you recognize them and beat them?





Innocence? not guilty to other people and ones ownself.





Pure? Even the gods are impure! Only the ultimate TRUTH, the most original awareness at the very beginning is truly pure.





Don't feel frustrated (if you are), just get over it.Do you think America's Puritanical roots has corrupted the true meaning of the words ';pure'; and ';innocence?
Well you're painting things in a strictly religious/anti-religious light. Just like purity is more complex than whether you've had sex or not innocence is the same way. It depends on what part of your life you're referring to, and who you're asking. To a 50-60 year old innocence means a completely different thing than it does to a 15-20 year old. Just like if you're asking a devoutly religious person what it means, you will get a very different answer than if you were to ask, say, a bum on the street.





So the answer is: Perspective. One man's(woman's) innocence or purity is another's jaded impurity.
Which question do you really want answered? As to the Puritans, I have always found their definitions of ';pure'; and ';innocence'; to be logical and straight forward, even though I do not agree with them.
If you start out wearing a gray suit how do you become corrupted into gray?
I think it's interesting, if you don't mind me pointing it out, ( because I think it might answer your question) that 'corruption' and 'truth' are abstract ideas that come from the same roots as did the puritan ideas of 'purity' and 'innocence.'





What is innocence? What is pure?





Innocence simply means have not committed wrong. Wrong depends on the context, and the concept.


This word embodies such a subjective and abstract concept that it could be used correctly in a variety of contexts: legal, moral, ethical, social, philosophical; and the boundaries of that are heavily dependent on the context.





Therefore for someone of a particular faith to consider them self innocent of wrong could very well be correct given their notion of evil and how that formulates the boundaries of their conscience, if they never cross the line between good and evil.





Pure simply means untainted, unaffected, unsoiled, unchanged, not varying, not having a characteristic that is outside the confines of the idea or concept we use to encompass it.





Pure gold for example. This is a silly concept because gold can't have anything else in it. If it is not an atom of gold then we don't call it gold. It can't be impure unless we hold a hunk of it in our hand, and we say ';this is pure gold.'; We don't count the atoms in our hand that contact the atoms in the gold, because the hand is a hand, and the gold is the gold, and those are two completely separate things. However if we learned that the gold within the object itself is situated atomically next to a number of other elements... then ';it'; is not pure gold... because we are referencing ';it's'; characteristics as a whole, which is not truly comprised uniformly of gold atoms, according to our own classification of matter.





If we did not specify what is gold, and it did not have specific rules to it, then it wouldn't be false to say that was pure gold.





Likewise within the confines of these concepts of good and evil, purity can be defined based on the rules. Therefore it would not be a corruption of the term purity for a puritan minded individual to think sex was impure. In context it is. And there is no corruption of the concept, because in context it still holds the same meaning, regardless of what practices or actions might come from it.





So no. I don't think the ideas themselves are being confused. I think the confusion is when we observe others and we apply their actions and justifications and reasoning to the concepts as we know them.





The only thing that has been corrupted, really, if you've read this, would be your original notion of innocence and purity. It would be, in this context, correct to say the finite definition as you previously understood is no longer in it麓s pure form. It麓s dirty!





There are no universal accepted boundaries to abstract notions like these. The only boundary is what is true of our self according to our self, and we draw the line between right vs. wrong. where 麓we麓 stops and 麓they麓begin.

curly hair