Let me begin my rant by affirming the following point: there are no original ideas. This point was first brought to my attention by the existential writer of the book of Ecclesiastes, who affirms over and over again that ‘there is nothing new under the sun’.
9 What has been will be again,
what has been done will be done again;
there is nothing new under the sun.
10 Is there anything of which one can say,
“Look! This is something new”?
It was here already, long ago;
it was here before our time.
11 There is no remembrance of men of old,
and even those who are yet to come
will not be remembered
by those who follow.
The very nature of our existence is ephemeral. In the cosmic world view of a universe that, as some say, is billions of years old, our average timespan of 80 years or so is but a flash in the pan, comparable to some sub-atomic particle.
There are no original ideas. I’ll attach a caveat to that. There are only new and original permutations or syntheses of ideas. Even then, one may assemble different permutations of ideas and may take a different path towards two very similar ideas.
Blogging has made me well-aware of this. For every original idea I may think I have, there is likely another blogger out there who has articulated it as well, or better than I.
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