Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

The line frames rebellion not merely as negation or political insurrection, but as a fundamentally moral and metaphysical gesture. To rebel is to refuse an intolerable condition because one senses—however dimly—that something purer or more rightful ought to be possible. “Nostalgia for innocence” suggests a longing for an uncorrupted state (before complicity, before injustice, before the fall into violence), while an “appeal to the essence of being” implies that rebellion invokes a deeper standard than law or custom: a claim about what a human being is and deserves. In this view, revolt testifies to value; it is evidence that meaning and dignity are still being asserted against absurdity or oppression.