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The Quest for Originality
To be human is to be redundant.
It’s often said in passing, usually as a heartwarming refrain intended to encourage cooperation and acceptance: “We’re all 99.9% the same.” The geneticists love telling us how indissociable we are, as evidence of the pettiness of our feuds. How this sentiment doesn’t stop all of us in our tracks and force us into existential dread, I don’t know.
Imagine all the various forms a thing can take. There are rocks and rivers, birds and buildings, stars and snow, and so on. Recognize for a moment, then, how unbearably alike all humans are. We have about as much variation between us as the bricks in a driveway. Millions and millions of people share your birthday. The chances are that thousands share your name. There are millions with your complexion and height. There are millions with your hobbies, skills, and aspirations.
However inconceivably redundant the human species is now in regards to its living members, so too is it redundant historically, having produced like generation after like generation. A world’s worth of people have been given, innumerable times over, whole lifetimes to have any thought that should occur to you, to speak or write every arrangement of words, and to perform any act.
By the simple increase in population, it stands to reason that the champion of…
