Monday, June 13, 2005

The Paradox of Originality

Throughout the blogosphere there are millions upon millions of blogs and probably billions upon billions of entries. Encased in all these entries are trillions and trillions of ideas and concepts. To top it all off, I bet there are quintillions of phrases, words, syllables and letters.

For all this cacophony of information, not a wit of it is original and yet a lot of it is.

Thought belongs to the commons of humanity. Whatever I might happen to write this very moment has been written before and will be written again. The flow of thought is both ephemeral and perpetual, personal and universal.

When an idea or conceptualization filters its way through the reaches of my consciousness, its origins come from somewhere outside of me. It's as if I plucked an apple from a tree. The tree nourishes the apple and, by biting into the fruit, the tree has nourished me as well.

Ideas and the understanding of ideas follow the same symmetry. The ideas themselves exist in the consciousness of all humankind. We each select one of these [unoriginal] universal items and, through the processes of self-analysis, self-enlightenment and self-realization, we produce a personalized way of expressing this thought which is both original and not original in the least.

It is original because it springs forth from each of us as a butterfly evolves from a caterpillar, yet the idea itself is wholly unoriginal because, in the consciousness of the ultimate reality, it was already a butterfly to begin with.

Religion and science treat this natural paradox in two distinct ways. Religion takes the dichotomy between originality and unoriginality and affixes it to a particular point in time. Consequently, the original conceptualization of unoriginal thought becomes ensnared in the words and ideas of particular individuals (i.e., via sacred texts) and is not allowed the opportunity to spring forth anew as different variations of the ubiquitous butterfly.

Science or rational thought, on the other hand, allows the butterfly to spring forth again and again and again. Each time we "discover" a new aspect of a universal (unoriginal) concept, it adds to our wealth of knowledge. This new expression of an already present concept takes flight in our imaginations until which time a new expression replaces it.

1 comment:

Comments are unmoderated, so you can write whatever you want.