...the original copy...

...there is a thing that is said in design circles:
"there is no such thing as an original idea"

So what implications does that have on you and me?

Superficially, it means that everything we think is new and improved is merely different. Is that really true? Logic says that it is true only so far as technology makes it true. For example, detergent x might actually better than detergent y only because the newer one has access to new technology. As Audi like's to point out, their new A6 is smarter than the first Lunar Landing put together and let's not even go into how many calculations the ECU of the BMW M5 can do in a second....

Of course, going back to the detergent example; even if detergent x is better, it's still a detergent. It isn't a new way to clean; it is the same, only better because it is different.

So are we really living in a recycled world?
Yes and No.

Yes, we live in a world where everything we think and do has already been thought and done but so what? In my world, everything I experience is going to be new so why does it matter that some other Yeter Puen halfway around the world has already done the things I am about to do?

There is the argument of progression.
If all we do is re-do what is done before, what does it achieve? While it is new to me, to the masses it isn't and is in a way useless. Man's greatest talent is to better himself so to be doing what has been done before is to be stepping into other people's footsteps. To be doing what has been done is to be lazy and to be complacent. It is illusion to oneself of being better than one really is when all we are doing, is being absolutely unoriginal.
So is originality the greatest achievement?
Possibly.
Within context of course.....

An original idea is something that ocurs only once in a blue moon when virgin Manatees serenade Manbou across the pacific as a schoal of Bluefin plays polo against the Bottlenose Dolphins off the African coast.

Unsurprisingly, people seem to be born knowing the importance of originality. Withness the youths' obssession with being "special" and being an "individual". If originality wasn't something to strive for, why would the driving force of society be so focussed on it? Brands spend millions on being something better than the rest; at being original.

So how original are we really?
At the beginning I started with the thought that there is no such thing a an original idea and I stand by that. But again, like I ask so many times, so what?
I have said that the individual is the sum total of past experiences and their influence on our thoughts and actions at any point in time in any situation. It follows that even we are following in what other people have already done, it serves a purpose. Without our own personal experience of those unoriginal deeds, we have no hope of knowing what has already been done. Things do not exist independent of the experience and experience does not exist without the knowledge of the thing. To know he thing, you have to do it. Without doing it you have no knowledge of it.
What seems to be important then, is not to be original but to learn of all the unoriginal things. Only then can we even have hope of having something that while it might not be original, might be a thought less common than others.

The fear here is that we aren't really indivuduals at all. After all, everything we can think of has in all probability already been thought of by someone else and will be thought of by someone else some time in the future and in many other futures. Everything we can know is bound by what we do know and even then, the new things what we discover aren't really new in as much as they already exist, we just haven't put it in words yet. I find it hard to believe that no one else has not done the things I have done and seen the things I have seen. Of course, this is ignoring the important little thing I said earlier; we are the sum of our experiences. That is the saving grace of the possiblity of individuality. It is the exact sequence of our experience that makes us who we are. Add to that the magic unknown quanity that makes us think in the way we do and you have what makes us individual. The trick is to accept things and to not aim to not blindly copy others. To copy without knowledge is to deny yourself of what is really important in that original. To say things because you think that is what people expect you to say is a lie. To do things because you think that is what people expect you to do is a lie.
Copying without knowledge of why you're copying is the real problem.
To know the reasons of that (possible) original is what you should strive to do.
After all, learning is at its basic, copying.


So to be unoriginal is natural.
The challenge is to learn of how unoriginal you are.
Seeing as this is that time of year I guess this is a challenge to myself.
To learn more.




Titled: 19th December 2007
Published: 31st December 2007