"Whoever thinks an idea can be copyrighted has already forgotten its source"
-(doesn't matter, right?)
I've probably never had an original thought in my life. Have you? Really?
Yesterday I get this great idea for a picture, a melting ice cream cone earth. Quickly, I sketch it out. Suddenly, I wonder if anyone else has ever thought of this, so I google it. OMG! (Hint: Someone has.)
What is an original thought in a time of the global brain? There's an ivy league professor now who teaches his creative writing students by assigning them to go plagiarize an essay from the interweb and then, to defend the content as their own.
Every little cultural bit rests upon the entire edifice that has been built under it. Without all the bits that are quite similar, a new bit makes no sense to us. But without a different new little twist it is not 'original'. So culture is a fractal creature, ever evolving, self similar and repeating endlessly, yet never exactly the same, gradually emerging into new patterns by successive iterations.
How absurd to think that we can individually own these little bits that we create for one another. What use is my puzzle piece without the rest of the puzzle? What use is art unshared? Poems unheard? Books unread?
Are these creations of ours not our gifts to the world? Did we not receive the context, the language, the skill instruction and opportunities, verily, even the inspiration itself, from others, from spirit? Shouldn't we share this creativity freely instead of paywalling everyone out?
Surely we deserve acknowledgement, appreciation, and support from that same pool of culture. How do we support artists in an age in which everyone can be, is, or will soon be an artist? Oh yeah, about my great idea, the melting earth ice cream cone? I didn't bother finishing it.
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