INNOCENCE AS A WAY OF LIFE.
Natural experiment

October 14, 2010

When I started writing this piece I was in very low spirits over the dark sides of human nature and a mess in people’s minds about true and false values in life. However the Chilean phoenix miracle has somewhat revived me back to life and the pessimism with which I wrote it only several days ago is taking me a little by surprise now.

This piece is about purity and innocence as a way of life and how Michael Jackson managed to prove to us that innocence is the best path any human being can ever take.

Why did Michael have a paper with the words “Children are innocent” pinned to a wall in his room? Why was this message so important to him that he wanted to see it until his dying day? The reason for it was probably because he was terribly tired of what the world is like today and needed a constant reminder of another force in life which could help keep him going.



When old people return to childhood, I have seen them, they become very playful and childlike. I relate very well to old people because they have those qualities of a child. Whenever I go to a hospital I always find a way to sneak into another room to talk to the old people. I just did it two days ago because I was in the hospital and they were so sweet and they just welcome you like a child does. They say, “Come in”, and we talk. They are simple and sweet. Old people and children are very much alike. They are carefree and play-free and simple and sweet. It is just a spiritual feeling. I don’t visit the old people’s homes as much as I have the orphanages. A lot of them get Alzheimer’s and they don’t recognize. But I have a great relationship with older people

When you feel that the world is slowly sliding into abyss and is getting increasingly difficult for you to live in, it is only small children and very old people who can still give you some hope. Only those who have just entered life and haven’t been touched by its corruption and those who are on the verge of leaving it and are long past its temptations are the ones who can side with you and make your company if you are a lonely heart craving for purity in a world like ours.

You can’t imagine how lonely a person is if he happens to retain some of his childlike innocence in his grown-up years. It is nothing less than feeling a Martian on Earth surrounded by a boisterous crowd of its truly earthly children. You can always try to pretend you are earthly too and a good laugh here and there or some joint work will let you pass for being like them for a time being, but the deep sadness you are feeling for what you see around will inevitably give you away.

These loners are sad because what is a biggest treasure for them is completely worthless to the world. They cherish cleanliness of thoughts and a certain freshness of feeling in their relations with the other sex – however the world is deeply suspicious of this behavior and considers it some kind of a perversion or pretence or asexuality or a publicity trick or whatever, because it – the world - abandoned its own freshness long ago and doesn’t remember what it is, and the word innocence has gone completely out of usage with it and is now obsolete as both word and a phenomenon.

Imagine how far the loners are from this world and you will know how deep a gap between the two is and how quickly it is growing.

The world is wondering why loners want to set strict limits for themselves and refuse the so many pleasures it can offer them, but what the world doesn’t know is that these weirdoes most probably did try or see the ‘other’ thing too - to only feel later that they are dirty all over and it hurts like hell when or if they betray their own selves and values they believe in. Now they will not trade their regained freshness for any sophistication in the world because it is only after they got it back is when they started living again.

They are sad because they are lonely as if in a desert and try to live a life of their own in quiet seclusion, however the world doesn’t like it as it senses disagreement with what it is doing. The world is busy seeking more pleasures in life and intensifying them too as what satisfied the world yesterday is not enough today and should be taken a further step tomorrow.

The pleasure seeking process is a very pleasant one and is spreading among people like a pandemic. When the world offers its latest breakthrough in the field of deeper satisfaction of human desires there are always some who feebly remonstrate that they are okay the way it is, however their resistance is quickly smashed as the younger ones try it and say it is truly fantastic.

“Why did you deprive us of this fun? Why don’t we have a right? It is our life and no one can tell us how to live and what to choose!” is their main argument which is really hard to refute. It is indeed their right to choose and the fact that they are really choosing it is what really makes it so sad.

If you think that I am talking about one issue only you are wrong – the breakthroughs are all around us and include lots of things like, for example, hunger for being constantly entertained, “I do what I like” principle, the abolition of human conscience and its replacement by cynicism, the money-decides-it-all concept, a much greater variety of sex opportunities and an exciting race for who starts sex earlier and in which way – these are only a few items on the menu list. Some call it progress and a human rights movement while the loners think differently – they consider it a surrender to the darker side of human nature as a whole.



You need love. You need love. That’s the most important thing. That’s why I feel so bad for those kids who sit in those orphanages and hospitals and they’re all alone and they tie them to the beds – they tie them because they don’t have enough staff. I go, “Are you crazy?” And I go to each bed just freeing them, releasing them. I say, “This isn’t a way to do children. You don’t tie them down”.

Those of them who take the process too close to heart try measures like Sunday visits to other people’s homes with disguise on their faces and religious books in their hands.

They also share millions of dollars with the ill and needy to rekindle in them at least some hope in human nature and belief in the divine justice which is indeed delivered through people like them.

They make attempts to explain to others that ‘they should be childlike’ not knowing how to describe it that the humankind needs to return to purity as a means of its survival or otherwise things will become simply irreversible.

They refuse to engage in usual sex orgies out of their great respect for love, romance and common interests and are looking only for a perfect match to make love until dawn.

Their find the air they are breathing suffocating and try to associate only with those with whom they can breathe freely - small children or very old people.

They set up places like very big ranches with attractions in them and lots of other fun things for the host and his visitors in order to show to the people the value of simple pleasures in life – like feeding animals, or riding them, or speedy driving golf-carts or climbing trees or having water fights or dancing together or reading books. They know that simple things like that are capable of dragging children away the other attractions offered by the world. They justifiably think that the happier is the childhood, the more balanced is the character and the healthier is the spirit – which may be the beginning of a hope that children will be better than their parents, and tomorrow will be better than today.

They firmly believe that almost everything in life can be corrected with a little help from the above if only a human being really wants it, so they are ready to give it try it even with the worst characters in human history ever.

They know that all humans have a divine spark in them and implore people not to allow it to be stamped out as otherwise they become helpless in the face of vileness, cynicism and corruption.

They feel furious when they see that those who have crossed the line are taking the innocent babies there too instead of trying to return to where they were before.

If Michael Jackson system of thought was that weird and crazy as we are told it is, will anyone explain to me please how he managed to single-handedly bring up three marvelous children who, when they were finally presented to the world, turned out to be pure and innocent, well-tempered and dignified, modest and disciplined, free-spirited and courageous all at once despite Michael’s weird pedagogical methods?

Can’t it be exactly the opposite case and they turned out to be like that because he shielded them from us and our corruption and it was his approach to life and people which helped him to bring them up in such a fantastic way? (OMG, let us keep our fingers crossed for his children now that they are facing our reality with all its beauties).

Can Michael’s life be a natural experiment God has staged on all of us to show that it is Michael Jackson’s way of life and thinking which is the best we can offer to our children? I mean the purity of thought and innocence he always sought for and spoke about, and a great deal of love which were the main things to bring about so excellent a result?



SB: Is it possible if someone is not a biological parent to love a child as much as you love Prince and Paris? MJ: Absolutely. SB: I have always noticed one the most impressive things about you is when I say something like, “Prince and Paris are beautiful”, you always say, “No. All children are beautiful”. You won’t let me get away with just praising Prince and Paris. MJ: They are to me. I see beauty in all children… they are all beautiful to me. It is so beautiful and I love them all – equally. I used to have arguments about it with people who didn’t agree with me. They say you should love your own more

Doesn’t the experiment show that it is the arrogant us who have completely failed in our upbringing methods and have a whole pack of problems on our hands who are the real losers in this competition?

I wish Michael had never been interrupted and had been allowed to associate with the children he invited to his home without any interference from the outside. This way he could have brought up a whole army of great youngsters who could have made a big difference to his nation now and who could have very well been as good as his own children – especially since we know it for a fact that he treated all children as his own.

He could have done it if only those beasts had not interfered with him…

P.S. If anyone is interested about who taught Michael strange views that “all children are ours” here is a piece from Michael’s tapes with Rabbi Shmuley where Michael tells him about his tutor, Rose Fine, a Jewish woman who accompanied the Jacksons on tours since Michael was a little boy till the age of eighteen. She was their teacher who was always by his side as he was the youngest and of whom Michael had very tender memories. You’ll see that it is exactly Rose Fine’s behavior which was later reflected in the way Michael treated his or anyone’s children:

… Rose Fine, a Jewish woman who was my beloved childhood tutor and who traveled with me and my brothers when we were all in the Jackson Five. MJ: After the show I would run into [Rose Fine’s] room. We’d read and have warm milk and I needed that so badly. She would always say to me, “The door’s open”, and she would leave her door open.

SB: You think she saw you as her son?

MJ: She called me her son…

SB: Did she show you unconditional love?

MJ: Yes.

SB: So you think unconditional love can be shown even by two people who are not related by blood?

MJ: Oh my God, yes, of course. I think I learned it through her and I have seen it and I have experienced it. It doesn’t matter with blood or race or creed or color. Love is love and it breaks all boundaries and you just see it right away. I see it in the children’s eyes. When I see children, I see helpless little puppies. They are so sweet. How could anybody hurt them?

SB: Rose Fine, although she wasn’t your biological mother, was able to show you a lot of motherly affection?

MJ: And boy did I need it. I was never with my mother when I was little, very seldom, and I had a wonderful mother. I see her as an angel, and I was always gone, always on tour, doing back-to-back concerts, all over America, overseas, clubs, just always gone. [Rose Fine] was with us all the way from the very first professional tour of the Jackson 5 until I was eighteen.

SB: And she would teach you during the day?

MJ: Aha.

SB: Regular subjects? Mathematics? English? She taught all the five of you together?

MJ: Yes, together, three hours. She taught Janet, all of them.

MJ: Rose died this year, Janet and myself, we paid for her nurse and her hospital care, or if her television broke down or the electricity, or there was anything wrong with the house, we would cover the bills. Now her husband is sick, so I am taking care of him, and because we felt she is our mother and you take care of your mother…

SB: You really felt like that?

MJ: Absolutely. She was more than a tutor and I was so angry at myself that when she died I was far, far away. I couldn’t get there.

… it hurt when I came to the door to see her and I went, “Mrs. Fine, it’s Michael”, and she would go, “You are not Michael”… That hurts so much. Growing old is not always pretty. It’s sad.






Thank you Helena for your generosity sharing your investigation!