The Thinking Cap: a collection of essays

Originality: The Guidance of Others

     Let me ask a question, not directed towards anyone specific, but really directed towards everyone or anyone. Would you consider yourself self-reliant? And by self-reliant I mean being able to follow your own instincts and your own ideas. I guess one could say by self-reliant I mean unique. Chances are an abundance of unique individuals are going to say yes they are different from everyone else and follow their own ideals. Now let me ask you another question; Should we follow our own ideas or should we accept others' guidance or advice? I bet that most of us would choose one or the other, or even say that sometimes we should do one and other times we should do the other. Well I'm going to let us all in on a little secret. This is a one sided argument. We can't do one or the other because one of them doesn't exist. Self-reliance doesn't exist. But what do I mean? We are capable of doing things on our own. We can follow our own ideas. It appears that way, yes. However, the truth is not only do we always rely on the guidance of others, but none of our ideas are really our own. Therefore, trying to say we should follow our own ideas is like trying to say the past never happened. In fact, we should listen to and follow the guidance of others, because that's what we do already when we come up with our own ideas.

     This idea of mine that no thought is original, isn't an original idea either. It is called the original thought theory, and it states that no matter what we say, or think, someone somewhere in the past has already said or thought it. We create our "own" ideas from the ideas of others and in doing so we follow the guidance of others. Even when we move out of our parents' house and are "self-reliant", we don't follow our own thoughts. We follow the thoughts of our parents. We first move out and get an apartment, or a roommate, not because we thought of it, but because our parents taught us to be smart with our money. And before that their parents taught them that. And before that, etc., etc. So "your" idea to rent that apartment is a long chain of others thinking up the same idea, and just passing along their guidance. Thus the best thing for us to do is to listen to others' guidance, others' advice, because given the two options of following our own instincts or following the guidance of others we really only have the option to follow the guidance of others, because the other just doesn't exist.

     All ideas, all instincts, creativity, all these things we call "our own", aren't our own, but the reincarnation of some past idea(s). Put simply, creativity is just connecting things. Mark Twain compared ideas to a kaleidoscope stating, "There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations." This whole argument of mine is simply just a Picasso painting of others' guidance or ideas puzzle-pieced together in a way, and with enough change, that I can pass it off as "original". Salvador Dali, a spanish artist, said it best, "Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing."

    In conclusion, there's only one side to take in this argument because the other side just doesn't exist. This is a key example of how we as people like to distract ourselves from meaningful discussions of actual importance, by arguing about things we'd like to believe in, but don't exist. We are quick to defend our beliefs tooth and nail, no matter the evidence stacked against, or the lack of evidence in support, and in doing so we limit ourselves mentally. And for what?