When you talk about originality, it is not just avoiding what other people are doing. Originality is being able to think freely and coming up with new recipes with existing information. Just because you are marginal, doesn't mean you are original. So in this post, i will try to shed some light on labor, originality and the opposite term called the trend.
The recipe is simple, new age capitalism and focus on materialism and convenience killed creativity and labor. We remember old games or movies with mind blowing details or hidden gems back then. Because people were able to take time to craft them and they actually had ideas to begin with. We remember music was awesome in an old game, but these days they just inject copyrighted music from somewhere. We remember one hidden door opening under a secret circumstance, these days we are just told what to do. This list can go on.
So why do games, music, movies, books all look or feel like the same these days? Because mostly they focus on "what works". And what works is mostly shaped by trends. Trend is basically a lot of people accepting the same thing. Well, it goes into psychology too but even religions are not that big of a trend these days, i wonder why. Anyway, people are producing to make money, not pursuing craftsmanship or innovation or originality. A trend promises money these days.
There are also so called "content creators" these days on youtube who are literally reading an AI generated script. People are blindly pushing. We now have lots of unoriginal people trying to look like they have original content. They think they can achieve some popularity by just copying trend information from AI and reading it. Do they really think people won't notice it or do they think people won't mind it? Or maybe it is the youtube users who don't appreciate the unscripted genuine content on the internet? I am sure the culprit it one of these two.
On the other hand, we also have people who are mocking the original thinkers. They "expect" certain things in life because they are narrowminded and therefore, when they see out of ordinary things, they start humiliating or judging it. This strange psychology is rooted from comfort of convenience. They also scare people from freely thinking or speaking or voicing opinions. I realize just being original does not always mean your ideas or actions are useful or beneficial. But constraining your brain's function into a certain space will definitely keep you from growing into useful and beneficial stuff. We have lots of examples of this in history, like jazz or van gogh.
Dreaming is also a source of originality and it is usually present in people with free minds. You should be able to dream about stuff or make up hypothetical scenarios in your mind to be original. It is like a crazy scientist mixing chemicals, but in this way, we do it with our existent knowledge in our minds. So no harm can be done. Nobody can stop you or judge you. So why are you afraid of dreaming? Or why are you incapable of dreaming? Is what you already know enough for your convenience?
At this point, i should mention this too. Is all kinds of convenience bad? Not necessarily. There is a scale of losing abilities or improving capabilities. Like the invention of calculators boosting mathematical research. Or being able to shop online. Or the invention of radios. If it is about laziness or it leads to losing abilities, it is bad.
I have said this before in another post. Money is ironically killing creativity and innovation because of the capitalism focused world. We valued money in a wrong way. Actually you would expect the contrary. Since we are living in an era where there are lots of ways of making money, people should have been able to somewhat equally and easily acquiring it, right? Therefore, people should have had more opportunity to pursue original ideas, right? Well unfortunately that is not the case these days. We don't have that much luxury to craft some unique thing without a guaranteed income in return. Most of us barely make a living with a job already. Also, do people even appreciate or realize the value of originality? It feels like people are more interested in trends.
Trend is not a good thing, believe me. Trend is an outcome and it can have any nature, including dangerous ideologies. It is not filtered or supervised. Even if you consider the dangerous ideas as outliers, a trend basically leaves other behaviors or things outdated. For example, AI trend doesn't seem harmful these days right? Unfortunately no, because being a good lawyer or software developer or writer or teacher is valued less. Because AI seems to solve problems in those areas and why bother solving them right? This example shows you even a productive concept can turn into harmful overall because it trended and the others are untrended.
We have climate crisis for example. Why fixing the world's climate is not a trend? It would benefit us all right? All we, hundreds of millions of people, have to do is to be considerate a little bit and put pressure on governments. But it requires responsibility and it is bothering us. Bu on the other hand, a trend is not bothering us because it promises us something, mostly money. I know there are non-profit movements in the world but you realize they are not attracting people as much. That is why they are called movements. A movement requires understanding of responsibility but a trend requires nothing substantial.
So does this mean we should avoid trends? Actually not always. As i usually say, humans are capable of critical thinking unlike animals. We can and should assess what those trends are in nature, to understand if it is beneficial for everyone or is it just a fire attracting moths. You should take your time to observe trends and keep yourself up to date in order to prevent some harm spreading to world. You can also jump on a hype train to make money, that is up to you. But day by day, if trends rule the world, we will be losing ability to produce. Because we will let someone else think for us or guide us or use us.
So if i want to summarize, i would say this: A thinking mind can achieve originality. Chasing trends destroys a thinking mind. Money is mostly the fuel of trends, because we have social media and because they are driven by clicks and therefore profits in the dysfunctional capitalism. So ironically, i have concluded the more money is causing the death of originality. You can consider me as a social media doomer, but ask yourself this: When were you actually able to give world something new without hesitation of being judged? Do you still have the capability to find originality and do people still see it genuine? See you at the next post. My posts are relatively original :)
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