Ok, thanks for taking the time, I enjoyed chatting with you.

This is seriously fascinating to me. I kept this bit to myself because I didn’t want it to affect people’s answers, but the thread is old enough now… my question and its answer arose from my religious beliefs, and here you are arriving at the same answer scientifically, that we are all followers by nature.

It eventually occurred to me after hearing the word “sheep” thrown around enough times that I’ve never met a person so original that they follow nothing and no one. Being told, for example, that I’m incapable of rational, intelligent, independent thought (because of my religious beliefs) by people who believe themselves to be superior critical thinkers… when the very idea of “critical thinking” was originally born from the mind of Socrates… another mere man, as fallible as any other, who himself believed he was guided by an inner voice that he alone could hear. So we religious folk are commonly ridiculed for aspiring to follow God by people who follow a mere man that, by today’s definitions, would be diagnosed a schizophrenic. I do love irony, seriously, I really do.

To be clear, I’ve been debating religion with people for a very, very long time, so none of this upsets me in the least… I just find it all extremely fascinating.

Anyhow, the conclusion I eventually reached is that there’s very real danger in denying our own nature as followers, because that’s when we open ourselves fully to the risk of blindly following anyone and anything.

I’m not sure, but I think maybe it goes beyond that, that maybe we wouldn’t have the words in any language to be able to express it. I knew a man once who passed out, went into convulsions and almost died… we had to call an ambulance and he was taken to the hospital. He later said that when he was passed out, he saw something he had no words to describe… years later, he showed me a magazine article about a man who’d had the same experience (of having no words) and said, “This is what it’s like”. Even then, years later, he still couldn’t tell anyone what he’d seen. So maybe that’s the best we could come up with, someone saying they’ve had a thought with no words to explain it? I’ve never had a 100% original thought, so I’m just guessing.

Very interesting. So to be sure I’m understanding you, let’s suppose what you’re saying here is bang-on… wouldn’t that mean we are each and all followers by nature and can’t be anything but?

You addressed me, I responded… not to flatter you, but with my honest answer. If that doesn’t suit you, by all means carry on chatting with someone else.

I believe it was gifted to us, to sustain us, all of us… but have to agree we no longer deserve it.

There’s enough room on this planet for everyone, which rightly belongs to everyone, yet everyone’s at the mercy of a self-entitled few who want it all for themselves. Like, piss off already.

Now you’re breaking off into something else that fascinates me… symbolism as a highly efficient method of communication. If you test yourself, you’ll find it takes less time for your brain to process symbols than spoken words… and there’s a very short amount of time in there where your brain understands what it’s looking at without the need of any other language other than symbolism.

I’ve had a hard enough time trying to think an original thought without redefining what a thought even is, so its dictionary definition is fine for this purpose.

I can’t fathom how we wouldn’t be aware if some thought suddenly occurred to us that was entirely foreign to everything familiar to us in this world.

Sorry, I don’t understand what you mean that it would be easier to quantity if in the form of a statement or opinion… original is original.

A 100% original composition, if you could invent entirely new notes. I know it seems impossible, but it can’t be when every single thought had to have been thought for a first time by someone.

Oops, I thought you were serious, sorry :)

No worries… I get a few flashes of almost genius, interspersed with many of remarkable stupidity… at least you only need to wake up (or get some sleep).

I keep going back to the fact that every thought had to have been thought a first time by someone, so that it has to be possible to have an original thought. Could it be then that maybe we’ve just finally run out of humanly conceivable ideas?

100% original… oceans and oranges aren’t original.

Wouldn’t matter if someone else had the same thought, as long as you thought it entirely on your own.

I’d say it’s because we’re ridiculously spoiled (Canadian here).

Very interesting, I can see how that could become like a thorn in the brain. But I can also imagine how an original thought might require an unusual and/or surprising set of circumstances that might cause you to forget Tim Allen’s theory just long enough for the thought to occur to you independently… like one of those aha or eureka moments. Also, I’m not sure about the connection you make here to a deity… there are plenty of things firmly planted in our memories, doesn’t mean everyone and everything that planted them are gods.

I’m not sure about the relationship between thought and the materials around us, but I do know that every single thought had to have been thought a first time by someone.

Well, every single thought had to have been thought a first time by someone, no?

Lol, in that case, I’m not gonna ask.

Yes, I’d say our thoughts can be distinct from each other… conversely, I can’t see how all our thoughts can be mere variations of one original thought when we’re obviously capable of thinking about many unrelated things.

Yes, I’d say memories are thoughts when we actively remember, and the experiences they stem from are the origins of those thoughts… but original only to us, not original in nature… unless we’ve somehow had an entirely unique experience.

No, we don’t need to express ourselves vocally in order to be having thoughts… hence, private thoughts.

Consider that every thought had to have been thought for a first time by someone. And thoughts and emotions are entirely different things, so that doesn’t work. Interesting though, what you said about our first thoughts being original… that hadn’t occurred to me, need to think about that one.