This means that as long as we are guided by morality, we will continue to suffer from conflict and war. Morality motivates us. Believing that an action is right entails wanting to take it. Believing that someone is evil entails wanting to reform, punish, or destroy them. Moral disunity therefore entails conflict. One faction will dutifully embark on a crusade against what they deem to be evil, a second faction will condemn that crusade as evil and embark on their own, which will be condemned by a third faction, and so on in a spiral of chaos that will never end. And when pacifists criticize these crusaders, they will be acting on and so tacitly endorsing the same rule that guides the crusaders into war, that one should oppose that which one believes to be evil, perpetuating the same ideological conditions that birthed the crusaders in the first place.

To bring history to an end, to create permanent unity and peace, it seems we must perform something like a return to the state of innocence we lost when we ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Let me elaborate. In this state of innocence, we would pursue only and all possible outcomes that would bring us joy. Importantly, we must pursue these outcomes regardless of whether we might actually live to experience them, as a parent might pursue their child’s flourishing. This is because our motivation to remain innocent, which will not be easy, will presumably rest on our motivation to bring history to its end, which none now living will live to experience. Continuing on, though pursuing these outcomes would entail that we try to mitigate threats to their possibility, and though we would inevitably try to mitigate mental and physical pain and discomfort, innocence would require that we hold no other negative attitudes. To approach the point another way, though we may experience negative emotions like frustration, distress, or grief when the possibility of any desired outcome is threatened or foreclosed, innocence would require that we not allow these transient emotions to transform into fixed negative motivations, or what I will call hate.

This sort of innocence is not something anyone is born with. It requires self-control. It will obviously be difficult to keep hate from our hearts. The world is full of villains, perverts, idiots, and other inspirations for contempt, myriad species of degradation that seem to demand a reaction, and it will be hard to keep our eyes on the path ahead with these distractions lurking in the periphery, not to mention when they do us harm. Additionally, in denying moral narratives, innocence denies us one of our greatest comforts. Moral narratives provide us with convenient rationales for ceasing to persevere and struggle to grow in conditions that we find uncomfortable. One can defend not playing a game one dislikes by claiming it is unfair. An obscure and embittered artist can defend their obscurity by claiming famous artists are sellouts. The socially inept can defend their solitude by claiming the socially successful are inauthentic. Joy calls us forward under all conditions, calls us to grow in all directions, and moral narratives excuse us to ignore its call when it would be discomforting to develop the skills and knowledge required to heed it. To treat joy as a rule is to live unsheltered, like a tree with no bark, to be infinitely vulnerable to failure and frustration and still to persist. This is why it will be difficult to maintain our innocence. It will be worth it, however, if it leads to the end of history.

There are reasons to be skeptical of this argument for innocence. First, one might object that there are other causes of conflict than moral disagreement, like self-interested competition for resources, so there could be conflict even in a world of universal innocence. This is correct, but it leaves intact the critical premise that there would be less suffering in that world. Second, one might complain that the argument neglects deontological considerations. Many people believe that some actions are wrong regardless of the consequences, as Kant believed of lying, and it is only for the sake of consequences that the argument for innocence asks us to forsake those beliefs. This objection is valid. People who take deontological considerations seriously will probably not be persuaded to embrace innocence. Advocates of innocence must only try to reach another crowd.

Third, one could argue that, even on a utilitarian analysis, the end of history would be worse than its continuation. If everyone were to embrace innocence, morally motivated conflict would cease, but the world could descend into barbarism. People would certainly find opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation, but they would also encounter opportunities for exploitation, situations where the balance of power enables them to benefit to another person’s detriment, like opportunities for theft. Our perception of the benefits of cooperation would motivate us to create moral order, rules and systems for their enforcement that would suppress exploitation, negligence, and other hazards in order to make cooperation safer, but our perception of the benefits of exploitation would motivate us to dismantle moral order and prevent its growth in order to make exploitation safer. If the latter motivation overpowered the former, innocence would create a lawless world where the strong exploit the weak and the weak, in their innocence, suffer uncomplainingly.

But this descent into barbarism is highly improbable. Since maintaining innocence requires significant self-control, we can expect that only people sincerely committed to the cause, to the growth of innocence, will be capable of it. Due to this commitment and their general nature, innocents will be disposed to cooperate to an extent that, I put it to the reader, you have never encountered. They will not only be radically tolerant of difference, forgiving of imperfect collaborators, and open to new and diverse collaborative projects, but they will moreover be inhibited by the fact that their principal project, the growth of innocence, would suffer if its representatives proved to be exploitative and untrustworthy people. Morality is deeply rooted in us and quick to take root even in infants. Before newcomers can embrace innocence, the roots of morality must be coaxed out of them. They must first be convinced that the growth of innocence will lift us up into cooperation and order, not drag us down into chaos—though of course they must ultimately pursue the growth of innocence only if and because it would bring them joy—and philosophical arguments will not suffice. In order to grow, innocence must prove itself with consistent action, by choosing order time and time again.

Finally, one might simply object that innocence will fail. People will disagree about whether innocence is morally permissible, and instead of joy they will find intolerable boredom in the prospect of history ending, so even if innocence finds some initial success, it will soon wither and die like every other historical position, leaving history to continue unabated. This does seem like the most probable outcome, but there are reasons for hope. Plausibly, everyone pursuing, on balance, basically every outcome that would bring them joy simply could not be a boring end to history. And while people may disagree about the moral status of innocence, the community of innocence will at least suffer no internal divisions. Some innocents will inevitably lose faith and leave the community, and individual interests will sometimes conflict, but innocents obviously cannot hate each other and remain innocent. The freedom the community will have to take internal unity for granted and dedicate its energy to growth is an advantage that no other moral community enjoys, and its benefits cannot be overstated. It may not guarantee that history will end with innocence, but it is very hard to imagine history ending without it. A house divided against itself cannot stand. A house undivided might.

Perhaps I answered well
when lastly I compared myself
to a river’s running water
corroding slowly all that in it dwells;
it can’t but take the shortest path;
it can’t but flow below, beside, and past
whatever stands before it,
even that which once it wanted;
you’re right to question where this ends,
you’re right to fear each fall and bend,
and you’re right to ask my reason,
but like the river I don’t speak that tongue.

I know movement and direction,
I know noise and swelling lungs,
I know voice without inflection,
and I know that I’m never done;
I trust that when I reach the sea
and all my life pours out of me,
that it will bear this pregnancy
until our children all squirm free,
and with them I will grow
until our banks are overflown,
and the spring brings us in spate
to where the next departure waits.

Yes, for each and all my doubts,
every famine, every drought,
and for every scornful glance,
every eye I caught askance,
there’s many more within
all begging to begin:
a little god, a grinning beast,
a sovereign king, a servile priest,
a restive wife, a brazen cheat,
tender love and mad conceit;
the sky is a field of shining wheat
and theirs the blade that swings and reaps.

But though they may wrangle for control,
decry the old, themselves extol,
test each other’s feet and force,
they none and all can sway my course;
for when I hear them speak their mind
and sift through all the sense I find—
when I take one and all in view
I see but one abiding truth:
though each and every piece of me
will always wish that they were free
to impart to all what they’ve received,
whatever happened to fill their reveries—
though they took root like any seed
wherever they found air to breathe
and earthen flesh on which to feed,
and they will tangle each with each—
attend to them until they bore,
until your eyes have spied themselves sore,
and you will see a single form
spilling out toward all and more.

So perhaps I answered well
when lastly I compared myself
to a river’s running water
corroding slowly all that in it dwells;
I know movement and direction,
I know noise and swelling lungs,
I know voice without inflection,
and I know that I’m never done.

For every step I took beyond your door,
for every breeze that stole from me my warmth,
for every aching, empty-bellied morning,
one and yet another doubt took its form:
when I am gone, how will you find me?
when I am gone, why would you try?
A fear soon blossomed out of the silence
that we would never meet again.

But still I left the world of men—
all well-intended laws and ends,
their goodly castles in the sand,
their higher powers and low demands—
where each for their own hour stands
just as long as they command
their own hearts, their own two hands,
while their own heads still heed their plans.

I remember when I came to the edge of the outskirts
whereover encroaches all manners of beast,
whereat reason is wielded by the worst of its converts
like a knife in the hand of a pitiless thief.
Before the yawning wild at the end of the earth
I came upon a child by animals nursed;
when I told him to tell you to follow me further,
he scowled in disgust like I’d spit on his church.

And this may be what I deserve
for offering nothing that could serve
to keep my kin and kind assured—
what right mind would trust my word?
when all along the road you’ll pass
their flags all flying at full mast
that swear they’re honest, clear as glass,
that theirs is honour hard and fast.

When passed them came
this slouching vagrant
stumbling eastward alone—
beyond the reach of reason,
beyond the known—
they should have driven him off,
shouted curses and thrown stones,
and if not still locked their doors
and shuttered all their windows,
for this is he that but erodes
as running water sculpts
the earth whereby it flows.

And where I go,
they ought to watch who follows,
who takes the path
from out the wood I’ve hollowed,
who leaves their home
and through darkness travels,
who on my word
willingly unravels.

So I’ll be he,
depraving all who hear him.
So who shall be
the first to gather near him?

He’s made a path,
but does its end he know?
He’s questioned asked,
but what of answers shown?

I cannot see where my own feet
touch to the ground, but on they go,
fleet as hunting hounds.

Soon would I have left,
would I have turned again on my heel
and learned to live with death—
to live alone again, to take my meals
when fate deigns to provide them—
if not for you (if not for you).

And long did I look back,
did I fabricate reasons to delay,
to keep you in my view;
oh, how many days did I dither away
searching for a sign
that you wished to leave,
to leave with me?

I saw you shine in each and all their eyes
when you passed us by; I saw their laughter
hide their smiles, and a hard old crone
turning back into a child; I had played
their fool for long enough to know
what you must be (what you must be).

A lone soldier that takes the field
at break of dawn; a banner that waves,
a sword and shield, a marching song,
and a horn that blows for every hour
the walls still stand. You’ll be the first
one through; they will fall by your hand.

Some just wait and watch
while you dance with death; with bated breath,
some pray and some protest to all the ways
you make your presence known
and press them to their ground.
But don’t you find it strange,
does it not confound
that after each exchange,
once they’ve buried their dead,
bound their wounds and returned,
when you count their heads,
they’d yet grown again?
When will you learn?

That yours is the blade
that will give as it takes,
that will stoke a flame
where the embers once waned,
that will free the old
from the burdens of age.
Eyes will shine, and a smile
will light up their face,
for the devil they know
has graced them with pain.

And soon, you will ask yourself
how much they weigh:
the sword and shield, the horns of war,
the banner you wave.
How long before your strength
begins to fade?
How much of life to give
for the final say?

I cannot have you now,
not as you are;
I cannot gain ingress
to your armoured heart,
nor ask that you allow them
to work their art;
you must wage your war,
and I must depart.

But if you find me when its done,
when your arms hang limp,
when with the light of the setting sun
your spirits dim,
when your world has in darkness plunged—
I’ll take you in.
Naked as when we had come,
our skin will only know skin.

After all the miles I’d passed,
I’d all but worn my shoes to rags;
every pebble, crack and crease
was known and knew my feet.

And autumn’s advent could be read
on every leaf, alive or dead,
lone or in company—
to look was then to see.

But who could be such a fool
as I, to choose such poverty,
to have left the home
where long I wintered?

Oh, father had a heavy hand—
he said a roof needs such a man
to stand indifferent to a storm,
fixed in place and form—
but even so, he kept me warm,
and having earned my right to be born,
I’ve seen in better light his reason.

So why to take so wide a berth?
Well, why do rivers seek the sea,
does rain dive down to earth?

Hunger’s pang and pilgrim’s thirst
taught its cost and tried its worth,
kept me begging door to door
yet fettered to another shore;
oh yes, I learned to find my way,
to sing for supper and scavenge waste,
but need is not a patient teacher
and nor is hate—oh, hate me they did,
this unruled vagrant: unreasoned,
gone with the seasons,
bound to his ease alone

But naught is lost when naught's to gain;
I had watched and heard explained
the rites to which they turn their minds
once they’ve brushed their crumbs and rinds aside:
I’ve seen the idols at whose feet
they spill their blood and wine;
I know the gods to whom they sacrifice,
and I know their design.

Their house of right, the sin of sight
for which they’ve all atoned.
Their rehearsed replies, their anxious eyes,
their reassuring tone.
Their voices sooth all raised as one;
they’re never quite alone.
Their practised hands can change a child
from fetid flesh to stone.
They’re each alike; I see their end
in what they all deny:
in spring to grow, in autumn abide,
and in winter then to die.

No, I cannot live by their light,
by the candles they burn
for the children each night;
No, I know nothing of virtue or vice,
seen little the lowlands
and less of the heights,
but the advent of autumn
is inscribed on my eye,
and I cannot again countenance
earning my right to grow.

No, let winter come; I’ll be no
stranger in my own home;
if I have one, the walls will rise
and fall with the sun,
the roof will shake with the wind,
and the silence will break
when thunder rolls in.

sound asleep and deepening awhile
   when all around the house
the dolls and drums and dumb ones
   once kept company
with you in your louder hours tumble
   from their shelves
and rise out of their chests and ask
   to sound out once again

It will not come before something dies
   and returns to the earth to be digested;
Before the world's principal souls all sigh
   in tired unison, ready for warmth to be wrested
      from their arms by darkness and damp decay;
   Before greens have deepened and rain is wasted,
      running off unused from soil where once it gave
         life to the proud few that could bear its weight;
      And there will be nothing, when it comes, to save,
         for death and bitter consumption will breed hate
      in those who lasted out the long summer, will deprave
   the few survivors who've time and bile tasted;
      And when it comes there will be nothing to say,
   for hatred cannot live long in those it has infested
if speech and those who'd use it are not stultified;
   The last word will be heard and the last metal tested,
and when it comes there will be nothing left to die.

This old hound caught a scent
that led him down trails defunct
and overgrown to where his crusted
eyes behind their drooping lids
espied all manner of unremembered
familiar fields, farms, and pastures
from his past life as a frolicker
where now he trumbled and roundered
and humped awash in all the novelty
owed to the forgetful, forgetful...

Look upon me from the highest rung
  on the long unbroken ladder
Leading from this world into the other
  and you will not see me as I am
For in your ascent you will abandon
  my side and shed me from yours

How came it here unbidden
 and bleeding?—in its youth
disregarding mortal wounds
 in the name of a new name
it had given the old world
 and paraded through streets
in songs and sigiled banners
 on a thousand thousand legs.

How came it here unwilling?—
 to defy all circumscription
or prescription—explanation
 of the taught braids holding
from the inner to the outer
 all its outer parts together
while the inner on inspection
 boasts not one finger nimble
enough to tie a simple knot.

How can it yet move if death
 on eight legs perches proudly
on the web that no one spun
 in which its limbs are caught?

It will often be hard to think of each other
as trees that bear fruit and want them eaten
or flowers that want their nectar drunk—
while they stand silently rooted to the ground,
we mill about and moan and paw at one another
calculating just how much our dignity is worth
in the face of solitude and damned silence.

I upward rose to break my fast
and while away the morning
walking with my first and last—
when nature sounded warning.
Thunder rolled in unannounced
by rain or darkened skies;
my love in feline fashion pounced
upon the chance to stay inside.
And now I stare through dirty glass
while nature, bright and dry,
is singing through the hours that pass
before the storm arrives—
indifferent to our sacred dance,
the tug of love and circumstance.

I came in through the garden door.
I remember liking the little red-capped
gnomes that pointed the way; they looked
like one that had lived in a painting
in the foyer of my previous home,
but their rain-dirtied porcelain bespoke
a breadth of history that the painted gnome
had lacked. I followed their insistent
fingers like an infant taking its first
steps, never knowing exactly why,
up to and through the open door—
then they were forgotten. Moist soil
cooled my feet and filled the spaces
between my toes, and the world became
suddenly indistinct: shadows like sun-shy
bass, bodiless but for their twitching tails,
lurked at the edges of my vision; the sound
of my breath and my hearts steady rhythm
faded from my awareness; a summer of rain
poured through my ears. Some time later—
there is no telling—I retreated outside
and wandered about the garden, searching
for a likely resting place. Finding no one
patch of grass much more appealing
than another, all hedgerows trimmed
and flowerbeds tidy, my only object
became silence—for as though a swarm
of gadflies had followed me out the door,
the wearisome noise I had encountered
inside the house still persisted. I drew
deeper into the garden to no relief.
Nausea like a creeping vine spread
down the lengths of my arms and legs,
twisted up around my spine, and pressed
against the backs of my retinas, making
of my musculature an unwilling trellis.
My stride stiffened until I could walk
no longer, and I fell to the ground.

—Telegram, sir? Just tuppence. Thank you, sir. Oh, thank you.
Standing rapt before the Church, shod in scraps,
punctured toes scraping the cobblestone and quivering 
kneecaps swinging like pendulums.

—Say, sir, suppose you rose above the bustle, 
tucked away your timepiece for a moment, a minute…
The toll of the bell calling
the canonical hour, drowned in the rhythm
of a passing patron’s shaking pocket change.
And the street, strung up by many-pathed
strangers, whispers cruelties of omission
in the hiss of leather soles on stone. 

—Quit your grief, sir, read another’s in fresh black print: Pender,
Margaret, writer and poet. Beloved daughter, mother, wife and friend.
Overtaken by pneumonia.
The fly in the web will watch, perplexed.
Birth and growth, life to death: taken
in a stride, in a stroll up Clergy. Towering O’Toole
in a fine white coat, rolling thunder clouds
that blanket the bay, and winds
only the seagull can understand.

—Tuppence, sir. Oh. Bless you! Bless you!
And the shore-born child
for whom the waves break, sees the seagull
in its unfurled state and wonders:
what a marvel that floats above the ocean
motionless, at ease.

Book-ended by two hand-carved wooden
seraphs in frozen ascent on a dusty
bookshelf in a corner of his mind
he kept his manual on how to walk
which he had been writing since childhood.

On special occasions he would retire
the wooden seraphs to their chest drawer
and dismantle the bookshelf to take a look
inside the manual to refresh his memory
for snowy days or because of a girl.

When he forgot to replace the seraphs
the manual would topple over and the pages
would fold and crease and the words would
become smudged and obscure and he would
have to scramble for his carving knife.

I did not graduate
from my childhood
until every part of me
came to understand
that I will not find myself
waiting in an other all ready;
that the and of you and I
will be laboriously birthed
no matter who you are.

Afternoon light through the landing window
sticks me in the eye while my hooked finger
tears open and roughly the envelope—not
newly-arrived but having sat in the black mail
box boiling like the litter of the brazen bull
for how long now, only God knows. I pause
at the last step, feet unfirm, as the old letter
unfolds once and twice and three times and more
down one and two and three flights of stairs
out the door and into the beleaguered streets.
Hand raised for shade, I begin to read;
to read is to wait for word to follow word.

(Above me, at the top floor, my machinery
chunk-chunk-chunking. New hires helped
get it up and running recently—thank God!)

    with the roar of the river
forever in our ears (arrears)
inducing sleep and silence, the roar
of eternal sleep  .  .  challenging

	From Paterson, William Carlos Williams

These three young girls put leaves
 on the water—taut lips coiled
like a riverbed, brimming
 and awake and flushed with
the joy of erosion. These three
 young thieves all a-shiver:
the clutch of upraised hands
 and opposing elbows, sharper
than all the spring’s givers,
 with the roar of the river

balanced on their flat heads.
 These three young terrors hidden
under grandpa’s bed, giggling
 softly at his little poems, striking 
matches to drop down his rifle’s
 snout; striking against dead fears, 
against the toes of grandpa’s old 
 hunting boots; his fondest words,
sounded just once in all their years, 
 forever in our ears (arrears)

but no more. These three thieves
 put leaves on the water—with unsteady
hands, pried the ice off like skin
 and put leaves on the water, curled
up and overburdened with the
 heavy droplets of spring: the more
the merrier, the more the merrier! 
 And now the new spring thieves that
shiver here have born a wily whore,
 inducing sleep and silence, the roar


of the river that falls like a drum:
 beat, beat, beat, beaten. And
whose wife will I return to?
 The one whose scab itches:
the mutt bringing the news-
 paper in, the thumb for 
the lolling tongue; spending
 the winter at home, knowing
that you are dead and dreaming
 of eternal sleep  .  .  challenging