The words hell in a handbasket come to mind.

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.

Not a clue what that means. Are you just compressing some chit?

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?

I get it. It’s just the kind of meaningless babble I’d expect in a social setting, like at a bar or party.

I think the States have some 🤪

So it’s just empty blathering then, when this German ambassador says they have our back. Great.

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.

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

What does that mean exactly, has our back? How?

I think you just came up with rump’s new name.

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.

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 :)