An Unoriginal Post about Originality

Two posts in two days?

Boredom strikes. Well, not boredom: instead the certain malaise that settles over me when I've finished one paper but the deadline for the second is still so far away. It's when I try to finish as much creative or personal writing as possible, until guilt wrenches me back to my work.

Today I turn to the great myth of originality.

It's a hoax. Or rather, an absurdity.

No great idea is ever wholly original. We do more than stand on the shoulders of giants; we are entangled in a web of shared culture and experience. Their mingling creates the conditions for similar thoughts within individuals. These thoughts are born not through lightning from a blue sky, not by our own peerless ingenuity; instead they slowly evolve in our minds, through our society, bubbling up in moments that only seem like revelations.

An example: Darwin's concept of natural selection and evolution did not spring forth in a vacuum. The fundamental concepts informing his theory had been stewing for decades, even centuries; Thomas Malthus or Adam Smith were only the latest in a long line of thinkers propounding ideas of invisible hands or selecting forces. Others, like Charles Wells, developed very similar ideas to Darwin's theory several decades before Darwin published, and Alfred Wallace independently conceived of the full principle of natural selection, albeit in less developed form. Yet Darwin remains a shining example of scientific genius; his work the definition of blinding creativity. He was, of course, a spectacular talent, but his name survives because he was a meticulous researcher, a major name, and he had the connections. Beyond that, and for a myriad of complex reasons, the time was ripe for natural selection.

I remain a bit of an optimist. I believe individuals are capable of unique ideas - but only to a limited degree, and only with limited utility. In the sciences – and by this I include all methods of inspecting our world and ourselves - the foaming crest of something different always travels on a deeper wave. In art originality is especially elusive. It is practically impossible to imagine something completely unique, something totally outside the realm of experience; we can conceive only composites of what we have already seen. There are only so many pieces, and thousands, millions of people have already arranged them in different ways. And again, what is remembered is often less original than it is especially well done. You can always puzzle something together that might seem special, but will it be worthwhile?

That is a critical point. I feel originality is progressively more possible as ideas grow less useful. I can imagine a history of the sociological impact of cactus needles; I can imagine writing a book and sprinkling its sentences at random across the pages. Such groping toward the immortality a truly original thought supposedly brings is perhaps most unbearable in music. Listening to Arnold Schoenberg's experiments in atonality is mind numbing at best, but are the soothing sounds of Indy rock clones much better? Are we doomed to struggle towards originality - to fail spectacularly, or to decay into comfortable mediocrity?

Perhaps, but this is not to despair. Rather, the foolish quest for absolute originality is merely a function of our own egos wrestling with the impossible. On a personal level originality ought to be an ideal, not a goal. Ultimately, what matters is the struggle – our struggle, as a society, a species, to develop new, hopefully more productive ways of thinking and doing. If we do this together, are we worse for it?