I haven’t celebrated xmas for several years now and it’s seriously been so liberating.

This is starting to feel like someone’s playing a joke on me and the whole world is on it.

Worse than that, I suspect they don’t care much if people notice.

You didn’t think very hard about my response to you.

Sorry, didn’t mean it as a criticism… it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and still can’t come up with a 100% original thought of my own.

Just thinking about comics is already unoriginal, something originally created by someone else and that many people have thought about probably countless times by now.

Forrest Trump.

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.

In all seriousness, he strikes me as someone who’s compelled to act out something from his past, maybe even his childhood… if true, that’s very scary given the immense power he has today, that he simply can’t be reasoned with like with a healthy-minded person.

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?

An original thought doesn’t have to be the discovery of something.

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.

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?

The first to explore the thought was Plato, approx 2500 years ago. Try again :)

I believe we’re in this mess because you did choose to have faith in politics… in fallible, corruptible people.

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).

Just let it happen naturally, as you’re getting to know each other. If you’re truly the sane one, they’ll eventually see that you’re sane and explaining your family history won’t be as daunting anymore.

No, I’ve never had faith in politics… this whole mess just convinces me I’ve been right not to.