Original, novel, hitherto unheard of, unthought of. Why are humans so obsessed with originality? Have we always been so obsessed? It has been said, by these same humans, that whatever needs to be said has been said, whatever has to be written, has already been written, in the scriptures, with Bible, in the Koran. But there too, the claim is not a denial of originality. It is rather an acknowledgement of ideas once original, once revolutionary. It is only a warning that all original thought has been thought already, there is no more to be said. But it has only spurred humans on, has always challenged someone new to think something new, newer still.
Whenever man has journeyed far into new and novel places and reached his island of comfort, there have always been some kids who stood at the beach, shaded their eyes and looked at the vast open ocean and said let’s set sail again, find something new, yet again. From the men and women who tramped across the globe in their animal skins to people who made thinking a profession to the mavericks who cannot stop creating something new we have been at it. For 10, 20, 30 thousand years. Are there still new thoughts to be thought? Or are we recycling thoughts now? But in each time, each circumstance, an old thought has to be reinvented to fit the present.
There have perhaps been a 100 billion pairs of feet that have walked this earth. So, if each of 100 billion with their 8600 billion billion neurons are thinking, would that be a minimum of 100 billion and a maximum of infinite number of thoughts? Can there be more thoughts than there are stars in the universe? Can there be more thoughts that there are atoms in the universe? If there have already been an infinite number of thoughts in the world, could I really now think an original thought?
Image courtesy Muneesh Pal and Beena Pillai
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