So I'm a pretty religious guy. I also like to think. People ask me my hobby, I say "thinking". So I've been thinking about stuff ... theological stuff. And I've been getting closer and closer to forming a conclusion on the thing I've been thinking about ... I was even getting started writing the rough draft of an essay thing I was gonna write for posterity. Then, wouldn'tya know, I pick up a copy of Augustines "City of God" and there it was, written over 1500 years ago. Granted, not quite the same, but if I wrote what I've been thinking and someone read it who had also read "City of God", they'd think I'd basically just rewritten it in my own words. Much much shorter. lol. But yeah, so frustrating to think I'd almost come up with an original idea that people would be interested in. My one thought of comfort is that I thought of this at age 17 while Augustine was like ... old. So maybe there's hope for me yet. Doesn't change the frustration I feel though. Anyways, just thought I'd vent. blah.
Posted by pfresh85 (Member # 8085) on :
I think there's some point where you realize that it's hard to come up with something truly original. I mean almost everything has a basis in something else. What you should strive to do is to shine a new light (a new viewpoint as it is) on a topic already discussed. If Augustine discussed something one way in "City of God," maybe you can start from there and go off on another tangent. Or maybe offer another view on the same ideas.
Posted by dh (Member # 6929) on :
Great minds think alike.
Besides, when you're thinking about God and theology, you don't want to necessarily be original, you just want to be as close to the truth as possible.
Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
There are no original ideas, just original ways to present them.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
Didn't we already have a thread about this?
I wrote a paper in 11th grade English about the fall of Satan in Paradise Lost. Then at college I found my Rhetoric professor's honors thesis in the library. It was about the exact same subject, and drew the same conclusions as I had (albeit more fleshed out).
Two advantages of having found that thesis: 1) I realized that at least some of my ideas were good ones that other smarter people were having; 2) I managed to use what both I and the professor had wrote in one of our weekly assignments, and got very favorable comments on my conclusions. Posted by Dr Strangelove (Member # 8331) on :
prbly did have a thread like this before. I have to agree with the fact that there are no more original ideas, at least in certain subjects, which happen to be the ones I'm interested in. But yeah, I didn't expect any responses, just wanted to vent to people.
Posted by advice for robots (Member # 2544) on :
I was just kidding. Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
I felt this way about...heaven help me, I can't remember who thought of it first. But I was spining an elaborate theory about something, and was informed that it was a great idea. It was now, and it was a hundred years ago when [insert correct philosopher] wrote it down first. *sigh*
Posted by Tatiana (Member # 6776) on :
Hey, Richard Feynman the physicist used to think up new ideas and then he'd discover they were invented first by the greeks a few thousand years ago. He thought that was cool and kept thinking of more, then he found they were invented during the renaissance, then early 20th c., etc. <laughs> The better he got, the more recent the idea was first discovered, until finally he figured out something nobody had found before him. He kept on doing that, too. And eventually got a Nobel Prize as well as other cool stuff. Anyway he had a great time through the entire process, which is really what he was all about, having fun. But keep going. You'll get there eventually.
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