“There is nothing new under the sun.” “There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.” “Nature is a tenacious recycler, every dung heap and fallen redwood tree a bustling community of saprophytes wresting life from the dead and discarded, as though intuitively aware that there is nothing new under the sun. Throughout the physical world, from the cosmic to the subatomic, the same refrain resounds. Conservation: it's not just a good idea, it's the law.”
However, you want to have it said the sentiment is common, and has been uttered for as long as humankind has put pen to paper. Being original seems close to impossible. There is nothing new. Or is there?
I would like you to contemplate for a moment where new ideas come from. How do you come up with something new? How do realizations strike?
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Without getting into the neurobiology of new ideas too deeply, they come when you make a connection between two or more previously disparate ideas in your brain. You see a thing in a new light, and you understand something you didn’t before. A is like B. C can influence D. E is less like than F than previously thought. Is it new? It might be new to you. Is it new to humanity? Perhaps not, but perhaps few know about it.
Life certainly has its uniqueness. Nobody has ever lived right now, as you, in your world and life as you have lived with your exact experiences. Not even if you have an identical twin raised by the same parents. They are your twin and you are theirs. Very similar, but still different.
Why am I talking about any of this in a reading post? Because being unique, being original, making connections, is very hard. It happens in your brain. You can’t outsource it.
In the modern world we have outsourced a remarkable amount of our knowledge to search engines, and websites. We think we know things that we don’t know, because the data exists rapidly at our fingertips. This is not intended to be a question of the validity of the available data, which is a different problem. This is not a question of should we outsource less. This is a writer pointing out, that it is biologically impossible to make connections, and intuitive leaps, if you don’t already have the data in your mind. You can not outsource inventiveness, and new ideas.
Be careful how much of your data you decide to outsource to the internet. Remember, the more you read, the more you consume, and the more you place into your own brain, the more likely you are to understand things and see the forest through the trees. Re-shore your knowledge base.
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