PRECIS: We've Fallen, and We Can't Get Up

In the creation stories of the Bible's Genesis, the Quran, Shakespeare's "The Winter's Tale," and Rousseau's confessions, many elements are repeated that attempt to explain why we sin. In all of the texts, life was beautiful before man sinned. In Genesis and the Quran, man falls due to his pursuit for knowledge in the tree of knowledge. Obviously, knowledge was considered the highest possession (as Plato thought that knowledge was the highest human pursuit) as it was the only possession we were not allowed. Because of this, humans are bound to God as inherent sinners and always will be. This is the life that humans are born in to, and cannot change.

Shakespeare writes that the boys were innocent until they sinned, but that it was "hereditary," suggesting that the boys could not escape from sinning. Rousseau in his own "creation" story shows his parents lives as beautiful before his innocent existence came about. It was not his fault directly that his mother died, yet he was born into a situation in which his sin was being born. This is much like our own situations, where we are born into sin, and so that becomes itself a sin.