By Angelina Tang
Picture this: you are an Isshin-ryu karate student. You’ve been training for years and you are to test for your black belt in two months. The requirements for testing involve partnering with other high-ranking belts at the dojo and demonstrating self-defense techniques for certain types of attacks with them. As such, most of your partners are black belts–senseis, teachers. You show them your ideas, and naturally, as teachers do, they give you their feedback and critiques. In general, critiques are good–think your Commonapp personal essay. You can choose to accept or reject advice based on how it fits your vision. They still are good, here, for the sake of improvement. However, this person is your partner and they will only accept you doing their revision. Part of this is objective success–if you’re doing something wrong, they’re obviously going to correct that. But, part of it is also personal preference; if your partner loves arm bars, for instance, they will naturally advise you to do a lot of them, too. Some partners are nicer than others about flexibility for your style, but at the end of the day, what happens is this: your ideas become altered by your partner’s advice. Your partner’s style begins to blend with yours, inevitably becoming a part of it. And then, when you look at your self defense techniques, you have to ask yourself–are these really my techniques, or somebody else’s that I’m masquerading as my own?
This is a scenario applicable to many contexts, not just a black belt test. Ideas are always subject to change as one learns and grows–such is life. We, as people, are always changing due to external influences. We have mentors that inspire us, experiences that change us, realizations that shape us. And yet, in considering the external nature of these influences, the implication is that nothing we do or are is truly original. We are amalgamations of the people around us–those we love and hate, and those who just exist in the same space as us. Our personalities shift as we learn to mesh with other people; our behaviors change due to pain, to anger, to avoidance; our mannerisms change even just according to the latest social media trend. These changes are not innovative–they are, at the bare bones of it, parroting other people.
And our ideas–they, too, are an amalgamation of the things we learn. New knowledge, as it is assimilated into our brains, prompts new thoughts, but these thoughts are still just based on knowledge somebody else already had and is imparting upon you. Our inspirations–they, too, came from something you saw, something you read or heard. They are all based on something. Thus, tying back to the black belt test scenario–were, then, your original ideas yours, or just fragments of the techniques your dojo master taught you?
Of course, it may be argued that some things are clearly more original than others–like, an essay you wrote by hand could be considered authentic compared to something ChatGPT wrote. That is true; originality, or a false sense of it, is still superior to plagiarism in that regard. But, look at the essay you wrote–the ideas are based upon the book it is about and the things your teacher taught you, the tropes that you have seen many, many times in stories, that you did not create. You may be more original than you would be if you copy-pasted mindlessly from an A.I., but that does not mean you are original. A grey gradient does not equate to a definitive black and white.
So, there is no definite originality anymore. What of it? It’s okay. You can still be more original. There is no reason for you to cheat simply because your ideas are not entirely novel–nobody’s are. Humans are all just trying their best to navigate a world that demands originality of them, an oversaturated world where almost anything you can imagine has already been imagined, where a top 0.1% is genius enough to think of something new. You do not have to be original to be a good person. Do not let imposter syndrome tell you otherwise–if your standard is impossibly high, then you will be impossibly miserable for the rest of your life. Simply be as original as you can be. You will never reach a perfect 100%, but just for today, a passing grade is enough.
