Saint Innocent (Smirnov)

Innocence is a lack of guilt, with respect to any kind of crime, or wrongdoing. In a legal context, innocence is prior to the sense of legal guilt and is a primal emotion connected with the sense of self. It is often confused as being the opposite of the guilt of an individual, with respect to a crime. In other contexts, it is a lack of experience. Innocence can imply lesser experience in either a relative view to social peers, or by an absolute comparison to a more common normative scale. In contrast to ignorance, it is generally viewed as a positive term, connoting an optimistic view of the world, in particular one where the lack of wrongdoing stems from a lack of knowledge, whereas wrongdoing comes from a lack of knowledge in children. Subjects such as crime and sexuality may be especially considered. This connotation may be connected with a popular false etymology explaining "innocent" as meaning "not knowing" (Latin noscere — to know, learn). The actual etymology is from general negation prefix in- and the Latin nocere, "to harm". People who lack the mental capacity to understand the nature of their acts may be regarded as innocent regardless of their behavior. From this meaning comes the usage of innocent as a noun to refer to a child under the age of reason, or a person, of any age, who is severely mentally disabled. Jean-Jacques Rousseau described "childhood as a time of innocence" where children are "not-knowing" and must reach the age of reason to become competent people in society. However, as technology advances, children in the contemporary world have a platform where they are referred to as "digital natives", where they appear to be more knowledgeable in some areas than adults. "Innocence" can have a pejorative meaning, in cases where an assumed level of experience dictates common discourse or baseline qualifications for entry into another, different, social experience.