The Curse of Originality

Joy of Curmudgeonry, with his usual wit, observes:

Originality has in many ways become “the intellectual pest of our time” The paramount desire for originality means that truth is of secondary concern, and in some cases, of no concern at all. A man beset thereby seeks to establish his extraordinariness, and, in striving thereafter, he may even refuse to recognise truth too ordinary for his purpose.

I’m reminded of Burke’s wisdom on this subject:

We know that we have made no discoveries, and we think that no discoveries are to be made in morality, nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grace has heaped its mold upon our presumption and the silent tomb shall have imposed its law on our pert loquacity.

Of course, our best universities teach our young people that all human relations come down to power, standards are bunk, and that each of them has it within him/her, as they say, to shake up the received order to accelerate the liberation of the oppressed. The far more pwoerful constraints of nature (as in nature’s parsimony with genius) are little discussed. After all, genius itself and talent and the like are also said to be socially constructed. What a lack of connection such nonsense has with our increasingly IQ-sorted world. And what false hopes this gospel of originality gives to those who could obtain a happy life on the lower but solid ground of commitment to excellence and truth and accuracy, whether as scholars or otherwise.

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