A lot of people, even incels, are against mass murders based on the false perception of "innocents", I'm here to argue there's no such thing
Innocence is not a false perception so long as you acknowledge it to be a subjective concept rather than an absolute one.
Much like strong/weak or rich/poor you could draw lines in many different places, so the words are not very useful on their own without a context.
Aren't we all aware that pedophilia and rape is rampant in Hollywood?
depends on what you mean by "rape" and "rampant" and "pedophilia"
or "we all" or "aware" for that matter.
Could you refine your statement?
Most people living in areas with drug king pins know who is running the area yet do nothing until a close family member or friend is affected (or they themselves)
Etc, etc, etc
There are many things about the reality we live in that we "just accept" because it doesn't affect us enough for us to care
Caring/Uncaring is also a false dichotomy you're promoting here.
A lot of people care (have some regard / empathy) for a situation yet still do not attempt to intercede because of competing cares which hold greater importance to them.
For example: if I saw a gang of thugs curb-stomping some yowling kittens, I would definitely care and be very sad. But I still may not choose to intercede because I would be terrified: caring more about my own well-being than risking harm to myself (perhaps getting killed) trying to save the kittens: especially since they'd probably kill the kittens anyway after defeating me.
Society doesn't care about the things that affect men (divorce laws, child support, alimony, etc), so the entirety of society is complicit in this
Again too much of an absolute: many in society "care" about this, but they care about other stuff more.
For example: some women probably think it sucks that there are mean women who exploit divorce/CS/alimony, but they care more about retaining their special female-only privilege (thus why it's called feminism) for their own protection more than they care about protecting men. They prop up an unjust system probably more due to their selfishness outweighing their empathy. It's relativistic apathy rather than absolute apathy.
ARE YOU TELLING ME THAT IF EVERY PERSON BANDED TOGETHER TO GET THESE LAWS CHANGED IT WOULDN'T CHANGE IN A MONTH?
Of course we could get things changed as a collective
But we don't, and that's because we don't really give a fuck unless something affects us directly, that's how humans are, AND THAT MAKES US ALL COMPLICIT IN THESE SYSTEMS
I think most give some care, though perhaps not enough to match the quanta you define as "a fuck", when it comes to motivating us to organize to make changes and oppose those who actively resist the changes and target changers.
Everyone is fucking aware of what is going on in some sense but they do nothing about it because it doesn't affect them and/or they come out on top in the scenario, so THEY ARE COMPLICIT
THERE ARE NO INNOCENTS
There are degrees of innocence and degrees of guilt.
The man unaware of kitten-stomping is more innocent than the man aware and wanting to stop but afraid of dying in the process... but he too is more innocent than the actual kitten stompers.
If you just want to have a false dichotomy of innocent/guilty then you are wrongly lumping people together with different degrees of causality for crimes.
Now onto why children aren't "innocent", that has more to do with THE NATURE OF WHAT IT IS TO BE HUMAN
WE ARE INNATELY SADISTS AND SELFISH (FROM BIRTH)
Children are not innocent, they are somewhat ignorant but not innocent, kids engage in the same vile acts adults do, just "lesser" forms of them, and we label these lesser forums as "acceptable" because "its a kid", its all based on emotion and us as a society avoiding an existential crisis, THAT CRISIS COMING FROM US REALIZING WHAT WE REALLY ARE
The distinction here is not what impulse we have, but what knowledge we have to temper it.
There is no difference to a 10 year old girl telling the ugly kid in class to get away from her because "he's icky" and that same 10 year old (at the age of 20) telling the incel at her college to get away from her because he's an "ugly loser who is stupid enough to think he had a chance with her"
I think there is: the twenty-year-old "ought to know better" to a greater degree, since she has had more time to learn empathy.
Her failure to learn empathy/civility/politeness counts as a greater failure and demerit against her worth as a person. She has likely had and passed by more teachable moments to do an about-face, whereas the ten-year-old has had fewer learning opportunities (fewer missed chances to change) to demonstrate being worthless.
There is no difference between a 15 year old bully that takes children's lunch money, and a 35 year old that makes the local small businesses in his area pay a "protection fee". BOTH are forms of "racketeering", one is just treated as "lesser" and basically ignored because "its a kid"
There is obviously a difference here too: we're talking about more money, a greater degree of threat, and two decades worth of abstained opportunities to learn empathy and alter behavior.
ALL OF THESE "LESSER FORMS" OF ACTS/THOUGHTS ARE INDICATORS OF HUMAN NATURE AND THAT PERSON'S MINDSET
I agree with you here, but since nature (while an overwhelming trend) doesn't utterly set in stone (people can change, even if they only do it 1% of the time) it's okay to philosophically recognize a distinction.
Having a more "advanced understanding" of your thoughts and actions don't make you more or less innocent, because at the end of the day, you comprehended the act/thought on some level,
The "some level" is different though, so the level of guilt/innocence is linked to that understanding.
I for example am far more guilty of contributing to the deaths of cows because I know what a burger is made of. Some 4-year-old who doesn't even understand the process of a burger obviously is more innocent in regard to the act of eating it.
If I choose to hit some innocent kid in the face, I would be more guilty of it (knowing the damage blunt trauma can cause) than some stupid kid who only knows that punch=pain but might have a false sense of ramification as to minimizing the potential deadliness of a punch.
That's a cultural problem too. It's not just cartoons, you have people trading punches like raindrops during action movies, leading people to instinctive view humans as less fragile than they actually are.
and you enjoyed what you were doing, so how the fuck can you be "innocent", its just special pleading BECAUSE HUMANS DON'T WANT TO ADMIT TO OURSELVES WHAT WE ARE, HOW INNATELY CRUEL AND FUCKED UP WE ARE EVEN FROM CHILDHOOD
They can't be innocent in the sense that absolute innocence rarely exists for a person given that absolute lack of knowledge rarely exists.
In cases like that, we usually refer to it as accident or coincidence.
I agree with you that there is some guilt in children who cause each other pain, but I also view them as less guilty compared to adults given their lesser knowledge of the ramifications of suffering.
There's no such thing as "innocent", we just label these "lesser acts/thoughts" that children have as innocent because we want a "just world" perception of things
If innocence can't exist then guilt can't either. They're linked together as antonyms.
I think what you're struggling with is that neither is an absolute but we often talk of them that way.
Absolute innocence can't exist just as absolute guilt can't exist. Both exist in partial relativistic quanta.
Ever notice how babies laugh while "playing" with their parents if said parent makes a pained face after they hit them, that's an indicator of the INNATE SADISM we have as a species
Some do, I guess. We should be concerned about those that do that.
Considering something innate makes us struggle with viewing it as guilt/sin/crime though.
Like it being in the nature of lions to devour gazelles.
Why I think we judge humans more harshly is because we have competing memes we expect to temper such impulse.
The more time passes in which someone could learn but where they do not, the greater they alarm us in their failure to become civil.
We go on to label that act/thought as "innocent" because "its a baby", but that's ridiculous, its really fucking sinister when you think about it, the fact that a baby laughs because you are in pain, the fact that its wired into a being to find enjoyment in an expression associated with discomfort
I would find it more alarming, though I wouldn't term it sinister, as that adjective to me denotes a more learned/intellectual malice rather than an instinctive one.
Though maybe that's just the eponymous film's antagonists influencing my attachments to the term?
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS INNOCENCE
That's like saying there's no such thing as shortness or tallness.
Sure there is, but it's not a yes/no discrete dichotomy.
If you think that way, you think "all innocents are equal" and "all guilty are equal" which obviously isn't true.
We're all innocent of some things and guilty of other things. It's situational and in degrees.
What ever you'd like to call "evil" is "inside of us" FROM BIRTH, its just that some age groups get excused, while others are judged for it
We have genetic predispositions to different thinking patterns, but experience/nurture/memes do influence the final result to. No need to simplify one or the other.
Its the same reason why a "child" can be "charged as a minor" for murder rather than charged for murder like every other adult, and its because "they don't know any better, its a child"
Complete BS, we all know on some level, WE JUST DON'T KNOW WHY
"on some level" is the key thing here.
If a 5 year old boy pushes down some 90 year old dude he might just be thinking "ha ha funny" or "make him upset, hurt him"
He doesn't understand like I do how easy it is for the 90 year old dude to fracture his femur and suffer infections and likely die from the fall.
That doesn't mean I'm arguing for lesser punishment though (euthanize the little fuck) just that I acknowledge he is more innocent of it: I just don't care, I'd rather breed such impulses out of society brutally rather than waste further resources on bad ingredients that will end up worse.
That 15 year old school bully who gets off on beating kids knows what he's doing, he just isn't completely aware of why he enjoys it
I don't know if they ever do become fully aware of why they enjoy it.
I also agree remove those fucks from society forever.
At the same time, while some people tend to learn little over time (sometimes even become dumber) there are points (though moreso pre-teen, not aging 13 to 15) where you gain greater knowledge of the consequences of suffering and how permanent the ramifications are.
That 15 year old girl in school that publicly rejects guys so that they get mocked and teased knows what she is doing,
she just isn't completely aware of why she enjoys it
Some speculation involved here: do you know for certain the reason she would answer publicly is to induce mockery?
That is very often the case but I like to keep an open mind, maybe she's having a bad day because her mom just raped her pooper with a carrot and she is snapping at anyone.
Humans are fucked up, society likes to pretend that children aren't because then nobody has to admit to themselves that they were always fucked up, they can give themselves the excuse that "SOMETHING CHANGED THEM" and "were not all bad"
fucked-up / not-fucked-up is another false dichotomy.
We're all fucked up to varying degrees, or maybe nobody is if you can't establish a baseline from which you need to deviate to be wrong.
Nobody is 100% bad, but we all have some % of badness... however you want to define that. It can be unclear which the latter statement you made is expressing.