Does originality exist?

I ask this question because I have noticed a curious phenomenon: some people make a point of claiming, online, that originality does not exist. I have seen this many times. Sometimes, they then go on to extol the virtues of finding ideas in the works of others. They seem to think that this is the only way to find ideas. Typically, they then generalize what they do – find ideas in others’ works – and state their strong belief, that that is what everyone does. Therefore, they conclude, originality does not exist. They even sometimes mock the idea of the concept, as if those who believe in originality are being naive or uninformed.

I find all this very odd. It is most obvious what is happening here. Those who do not believe in originality do not do so, precisely because they realize that they, themselves, are not original. They then, in a rather odd leap, conclude that since they are not original, and develop everything from borrowed ideas – that everyone else must do the same – hence their conclusion that originality does not exist. People see the world as they are themselves. Yet, the world is not like us. The world consists of billions of different people, each of whom is unlike us. It makes no sense to generalize across this mass of others, and believe – as they do – that everyone has the same process for creation.

I look at the world in a different way. I believe in originality because I have known the phenomenon personally, in my own life and in the lives of people known to me. I know original people. I see their thoughts and their works and know, for a fact, that they came from themselves. I know, too, however, that such people are a minority. Most people who “create” are actually DERIVING their works through imitation of others. So, some are original, but most are not.

It is a toxic belief, however, that people should think that originality does not exist. This prevents us from appreciating the original souls among us. Their works would tend to be dismissed as “plagiarized from sources unknown” – rather than actually created by an original spirit. That is a very sad and corrupting way to look at the world and work of creative people.

Luckily, it is fairly easy to recognize genuine creatives. They are driven from within, by ideas that bubble up in them; they have passion and drive – they speak in surprising ways and say things one has never heard before. So, too, is it easy to recognize the unoriginal derivers and imitators. They speak of their “influences”. They talk of the ideas they got from reading/listening/meeting/seeing others. Always are the ideas from without themselves...never do they appear within. They also tend to dismiss the originality of others, seemingly assuming them to be as they are: imitative. It doesn’t take long listening to and observing a “creative” person, to decide which of these two types they are from: those who create original works and those who echo, others.

The sad part about this is that true creators are vastly outnumbered by the imitators and derivers. This gives the incorrect impression to some, that to steal the thoughts of others, is the common procedure of all “creators”. It is not so. Genuine creators create, from their own thoughts and understandings of the world. However, those who talk loudest of their creations and are often the most famous for them, are, too often, of the thievish kind and simply echo the works of others, endlessly.

Originality does exist. It just doesn’t exist in those who claim it doesn’t exist. 

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.) 

Lack of creativity in adults.

Yesterday, Fintan, eight, was listening to the radio. There was a song playing which caught his attention.

“Mummy, was that song made by a kid, or an adult?”. Genuine puzzlement had settled in his eyes and inflected his tongue.

His mother, Syahidah gazed down upon him, knowing the answer, but wondering how there could be any doubt.

Fintan explained. “They keep repeating the words.” It was clear he thought this both silly and evidence of an undeveloped mind.

“It is by an adult.”, she assured him, a little unimpressed herself that it should be so.

Fintan didn’t know what to make of that. It seemed that he didn’t believe it worthy of a child, never mind an adult.

She didn’t explain to him further about the parlous state of modern culture – about how many “artists” produce trite and empty work. Perhaps she should have done.

It is interesting, however, that a young child of only eight was able to identify the essential emptiness of a song that had too much repetition in it. He already expected more from a song – more complexity, more variety, more of a story than this particular “artiste” was able to give. This, of course, prompts the question: if a young boy can see modern music as lacking, how can the adult audience not do so as well? Why is there even a market for such trivial “music”?

In moments like this, it is becoming apparent that Fintan is growing in awareness of the mental and cultural limitations of the modern adult world. He is beginning to see a mismatch between his expectations of that world and what it actually is and delivers. It is both telling and somewhat sad, that even an eight year old boy can expect greater quality and complexity from the adult world than it is able, in this instance, at least, to offer. In his innocent question, there lies a potent criticism of the state of modern music , in particular, and modern culture in general. It has degenerated to the point that even a young boy sees that something is missing. That something, of course, is intelligence and creativity. Once, one might have expected it in the typical cultural product, now, however, it has become a rarity. In its stead, we have derivativeness, “sampling”/plagiarism, simplicity to the point of banality, and a general sense of stupidity, in the “creator”. Even a child can sense it and wonder why it is so.

I hope that the future is better than the present, culturally, because much that is modern seems to have declined from the past. I hope that this decline does not continue and that the future holds music and other culture that children won’t puzzle at, that an adult could possibly have produced it. However, looking around, there is not much hope for the near future. It may be a distant future, before human culture recovers the complexity, depth and originality it once had – at least, in terms of popular expressions in any media. Right now, much of the work can be described by one word: mindless. Even a child can see that - or hear it, anyway.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html

If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here:http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at:http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is athttp://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

August Rush, Child Prodigy Musician

There is a film out, by the name of August Rush. It tells of a child prodigy musician. Unsurprisingly, my wife and I decided to go to see it, to see if it had anything insightful to say about prodigy. It didn't.

August Rush is the kind of film that I would wish never made. It is full of stereotypes and cartoonish characters - indeed, the central character, "August Rush"/Evan Taylor, is a cartoon prodigy - so shallow is the depth of his portrayal, by the director and writer. I will say nothing more of him, other than to say that there is little that can be said.

As regular readers of my blog will know, I am not fond of plagiarism - indeed, it is one of my abiding hates. Unfortunately, August Rush is one of the most plagiaristic, derivative, composite films I have seen in many years. Virtually, the entire content of the film is borrowed from somewhere else.

There is a main character, Wizard, who is just like Fagin, from Charles Dickens. The prodigy, August Rush, is forever hearing music in the world, just like Bjork, in her film of quite a few years ago, the name of which eludes me. Indeed, there are scenes of rhythmic sound and natural notes, sounding in the world, just like those that appear in the earlier film. It nauseated me to hear such imitativeness. Then there is a scene where August Rush fills a room with musical notes - they were appended everywhere, all over the walls, and all - just like the famous garage scene in A Beautiful Mind, in which we find a room filled with the jottings and connections drawn by John Nash, on every surface.

Anyone well versed in the filmic culture of the last twenty years, or the literature of the last two hundred, will find themselves recognizing virtually everything in this film, as being derived from something else. Watching the film became a kind of game of "Spot the theft".

I found it ironic, actually. You see the film concerns a boy of great creative and prodigious power - but the film itself showed that its creators had none of either power, at all. Nor did they have any real understanding of prodigy.

We left the cinema thoroughly unenlightened - except for a new appreciation of just how few thinking, creating people there are in Hollywood these days.

Don't rush to see August Rush - unless you are a masochist (or know nothing of film or literature and won't recognize the incessant borrowings.) On second thoughts, even if you don't spot the thefts, the film isn't up to much: it adds nothing to the world, and takes a couple of hours of your life away- an utter waste of time.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and one month, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and seven months, and Tiarnan, two years exactly, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Why not do something new?

There is a giant new outline on Singapore's horizons: the "Singapore Flyer".

For those who do not know, this is Singapore's version of the "London Eye" - the famous adaptation of a ferris wheel, that peers above the London skyline.

As is the way of such things, the Singapore Flyer is bigger and better than what has gone before. It cost more, for a start - at a not inconsiderable $240 million. So, in the realm of cost alone, we have innovation. Then there is the size of the carriages: about as large as a bus, carrying 28 passengers each. A vibration free trip is promised to all, allowing passengers to view Singapore from a vantage of 165m high.

Now, all of that seems wonderful enough yet, when I look at the Singapore Flyer, I find myself able to see one thing very clearly: derivativeness. The Singapore Flyer may be a new construction, but it is not a new idea. It is an imitation of the London Eye - taller, yes, by 30 m, but still very much an imitation of the London Eye.

I understand that it was constructed as a tourist attraction, that it promises to give visitors a "unique experience". The only trouble is, the experience is not unique. London Eye look-a-likes are popping up everywhere these days, promoted not by the original firm that made the London Eye - but by a Japanese company that made the Singapore Flyer.

I see nothing worthy in imitation, however impressive the imitation might be. I see the Singapore Flyer as an example of a culture that has an inability to contribute its own iconic structures. Would it not have been better to have done something new with that $240 million? Would it not have been better for Singapore to have built something that no other nation has - instead of building a "me-too" structure?

It tires me to watch the endless derivations I see around me. What really lightens the heart is to see something new, something original, something that has a voice of its own. Sadly, in Singapore, today, what we see, more commonly, is grand derivation. By this I mean that the derivations are on a grand scale. This is, I suppose, an effort to give the derivations worth and meaning - but it doesn't change the essential fact that what we are seeing is something from elsewhere, an imported, repeated, derived idea.

Singapore aspires to be a great city, a great nation, a "first class city". It certainly has the resources to be so. It has the means to achieve this goal. Yet, it has overlooked something. The true first class cities of the world are like only themselves. They are first class partly because they have their own style, their own voice, their own character. A city cannot, I feel, become first class through imitation. First class status comes from leading in one's own way. First class cities are cities that others aspire to be like: they are not cities that are themselves aspiring to be like others.

If Singapore is truly ever going to be the first class city it aspires to be - a Paris, a London, a New York, it must first find its own voice. Singapore must be first class in its own way - and not just an echo of somewhere else.

To be an echo, is to be second - and first class places are never second.