Plagued

I have a question. What do you call the subtle feeling that what you thought you just thought up, has been thought up before? As my English teacher friends can surely attest to (um, wait, that’s not right… ended in a preposition.) To which my English teacher (ahem, NAZI!!) friends (friends who-whom?- are English teachers???) can attest (Crap, is it ok to START with a preposition??) Sigh.  I’m just going to complete the thought, and then you can edit, ok? (Why do you think there will always be jobs for English teachers?! You’re welcome!)

Let’s see, where was I? Oh yes, plagiarism (jeez, that’s a hard word to spell! I had to look it up! Good thing I didn’t have to leave this comfy chair to do so, at 3:30 in the morning.) Yawn. Plagiarism. Yes. That’s where I was.  SO…. English teacher friends agree, it’s one of the first things we are warned about when we are taught to write. Umm, you don’t really think YOU are the first person to have that brilliant idea, right?? Surely, you realize that someone came up with it before you did! Oh, and they researched it better, wrote it first, and YOU have to find them and give them credit in whatever it was you were just about to say, K? (Talk about stunted communication!!)

But seriously, with the information swirling and hurling faster and faster at us ‘til it all blurs together (like that silly “you are in a forest” game we used to play as kids), HOW are we sure we aren’t thinking of this because we just saw it somewhere? Even as I ask these questions, I am already wondering who has already asked them, written about them, published them first, claimed them, peed on them, whatever!

Remember how cute it was when they used to march us into the little school library, lining us up in front of that very important looking set of drawers? How they spent weeks teaching us to think of a subject and look it up in ABC order, thumbing through typed index cards (like typed -on –a- typewriter  typed!) that were held together by one giant metal rod, then we carefully used those nubby pencils to write down the number that would guide us to the aisle where we might or might not find the five books we wrote down? And, if someone had checked them out, we could see who, by the index card that showed their pencil signature and was kept in a box on the counter. I wonder what jobs those people got, when technology swooped in and laughed in the face of their time-honored record keeping system??

Anyways, my long-winded, grammatically incorrect point is that we now have so many rapid -fire exposures to information every day, how could we NOT plagiarize?? There are so many ideas thrust in our faces, and so many avenues to thrust our own ideas (or ARE they?! THAT is the question!!) in other people’s faces- Look! I am employing one of those avenues as we speak! The BLOG. The new and ubiquitous outlet for people’s thoughts, notions, absurdities, stream of consciousness, everywhere! “Extra, Extra, Read All About MY latest form of Crazy! You saw it here first, folks! Get it NOW! Fresh off the presses at any insomniac time of night, from every urban high-rise, suburban cul de sac, rural spread across the nation!” We’re all connected now, for better or worse, and our thoughts, which we learn are not likely our own, might never have belonged to only us in the first place.

They are the intellectual property of the collective consciousness which cycles through us all. And when you think about it, maybe we are thinking about this insanely intense firing squad of technology all wrong. Maybe technology has only just begun to mirror the interactiveness and efficiency our own cells and energy have possessed all along. Maybe I am not writing anything that didn’t already exist in your thoughts as well (or in someone else’s writing) for the very reason that our ideas were connected from the beginning. (Hey, Techie friends, you had better hurry up! You’re way behind! You’re welcome!)

Go ahead. Look it up. Surely, someone has thought of this before I did. In fact, the notions of our connectedness are amusingly ancient. I’m quite certain I am not the first one to think them up. As for me, I’m going back to bed. I’m just gonna credit the universe for this one. That should cover it.