"The question here seems to be what's the difference between inspiration and plagerism? And my answer is always the same -- I don't know."
Wow. I have known for some time now that this planet is wretched, but it still manages to surprise me to find out just how low it really is.
First of all, the difference is that one is written correctly, the other is an 'american typo'.
http://americantypo.site11.com/typos
Secondly, how stupid do you have to be not to know the difference?
PlagIArism (the middle part capitalized to make sure you see your errors) is taking something someone else has created and presenting it as your own work. Not unlawful, although might be illegal to some extent (but who cares about that, when only those who consent to it, have to obey the legal system, not others).
But it's clearly immoral, wrong, unethical, and although not STEALING (stealing is TAKING AWAY someone's possession without their consent - confiscation consequently means "taking unlawfully". When you COPY, the original thing is unharmed and the original owner still has it, so it is NOT STEALING).
However, if you use someone else's ideas and implement them together with your own ideas, and you DO NOT present it as fully your own work, but honestly tell where each part comes from, then it's obviously completely all right and ethical.
The thing is, in plagiarism, DECEIT is involved. It's a form of lying. It's like someone does a good deed and dies, and then you take credit for his deed. He doesn't probably suffer from your actions, but it's still LYING. Someone might not suffer much from your plagiarism, but it's still LYING.
With copying with honesty, you are not deceiving anyone - you are "on the level", as they say (but no one specifies which level, or which world.. <- a little video game humor). The audience will know exactly what they are getting, and everything is straight and good.
Now, inspiration is a completely different thing.
When you are inspired by someone else, your own thoughts, the Universe, beings who reside at the moment in higher planes (like your 'dead' cousin in the astral plane, or Extra-Terrestrial visitors from even higher planes), or just Existence itself, you are basically jump-started to create something unique, something your own.
I can't believe the number of people who are convinced that there's nothing new under the sun. And yet, when that was said originally, were there internet discussion forums? Did King Solomon write to IMDb and complain with bad grammar about someone not being 'proper' although he's only making a valid point? I don't think so.
If there can be IMDb boards, that were probably pretty close to "unimaginable" when that idiotic phrase was originally blurted out, there surely can be lots of things that would be just as close to "unimaginable" to us right now.
Although there has always been visionaries, people who have been able to see into the future and beyond the realm of the physical boredom, even they might not have been able to see with clarity and detail exactly what I am writing here right now, for example.
Of course things like computers have existed probably quadrillions of kvintillions or who knows how many years or millennia. Atlantis had them, the Extra-Terrestrial people, who simply live outside the boundaries of this wretched planet, of course had them before Atlantis, or even the previous 'civilization' even existed.
But there had to be a time when computers were new. And "under" some sun. Then again, what does "under the sun" really mean, when we are actually on a planet that's not really "under" or "over" anything, as absolute directions like that do not exist in space. If you put two spaceships on top of one another, but turn yourself 180° around (imagine an axis going through your stomach to better get what you mean, and then imagine yourself turning around that axis so that instead of being 'upward', your head is now pointing downwards) and then look at it, which spaceship is on top, and which is on the bottom? What if you put the spaceships together, so that their floors touch each other, and look at them from 90° angle to the left or right (using the same axis)? So we are really not "under" the sun, and Earth is not really "under" anything.
Does the original phrase imply that between solar systems there can be something new? I mean, if you look at nebulae, you'll notice they are not all the same, but every single one is different. Same goes for galaxies and stars, solar systems, planets and even people - and even as small scale as their fingerprints!
If two snowflakes are never the same, if two fingerprints are never the same, then isn't something new born _CONSTANTLY_, whether it's considered over or under the sun?
And did he mean the galactic sun, or just the sun of our solar system, and does this rule extend to other solar systems?
I think it's ridiculous to believe in such a limitation, such a nihilistic, grey and dull viewpoint that everything has been created and thus you can't create anything good that some hack wouldn't have already commercially exploited without actually being able to create anything himself.
I can create original stories (and have, but most of those are lost). So why couldn't anyone, who puts their soul (not mind) to it?
Inspiration is basically a form of CHANNELING, combined with the force of CREATION. Nothing could be created, if everything already existed. But creation keeps going on, and new things can be constantly created. Similarities may exist in certain limited situations, like on a physical planet, where there's limited resources and all, but if the creation of different flowers were left to Lucas and people who defend that hack by saying there are only limited number of stories in existence, we WOULD only have like 5 or 6 different flowers.
But instead, look at all that beautiful glory that the Creation has blessed Earth's fields and jungles with! Look at all that diversity - how many different flowers exist?
How many different species of plants or animals exist?
How many different stories exist? I hope you are starting to get the point. There is no reason that all that diversity that's so abundant and natural in the Universe, couldn't also extend to stories. All it requires is IMAGINATION.
Inspiration is something that you can use as fuel for imagination in the process of creation. An idea is what might start that inspiration, and that idea can be gotten by watching someone else's creation. Like, if you see a plane flying low and it looks pretty neat, you might get the idea of creating something similar, but with a spaceship and different kind of scenery, and then that might lead to your idea expanding with inspiration into imaginative creation! The end result would invariably be a mixture of expression of your finest self, inspiration from the Cosmos (that you channeled), your imagination, and bits of the original idea.
So there might be a resemblance, but there would also be a flavor of "you" in there, and your finest self would radiate from it in a very different 'aroma' than the original work, and you would probably have taken it to very different directions. That's not plagiarism, that's just getting inspired by an idea that was helped to get born by someone else's creation.
You might get such ideas also WITHOUT the help of other people's creations - people here seem to take it for granted or gospel truth that it's the only way to get inspired - to watch other people's works. Like, "art inspires other art".
I want to avoid the word "art" though, because it's so contaminated by all kinds of pompous fools who think they know what they are talking about. You know, the kind that bought the 'artwork' that someone critisizing the madness of the whole art scene by buying a toilet and gluing it sideways onto some platform or something and sarcastically calling it 'art'.
Anyways, it's nonsense to be so nihilistic and uncreative - it's just an excuse to be mentally lazy and plagiarize others to say "everything is created, there's nothing new". It's just lazy. There are ALWAYS possibilities for creating something new and unique.
And even if it's not "completely new", if it is an expression of your finest self, if it has definite 'your' flavor in it, and if you have been genuinely (not falsely) inspired while making it, it can still be good, and deserve to exist.
Look at Calvin&Hobbes. Nothing like that existed, before Watterson started creating it! If he had been like people on this board, he would either have modelled it after some other comic and it would look awful, or it couldn't even exist, because, you know, NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN and all.
But that WAS something new "under the sun", and even if that sentiment WAS true, it still wouldn't matter, because humans forget and die. I mean, if there were computers in Atlantis, it wouldn't matter during King Solomon's time, because the people would have forgotten about that, and then they died, and were reincarnated into times when computers exist again, and they would feel computers are a completely new thing!
(I am sure many people felt like that during the 70s and 80s, and mainstream during the 90s and 00s..)
There is ALWAYS something new. The question is, are you humble enough to receive inspiration from the Universe to be able to create it? The Creator is always creating, and a human being is also part of the Creator.
Btw, this is why the Creator can't FORCE things against human beings - it would be the same as you attacking your own body.. you would simply both suffer. We have the omnipotent(ial) inside of us, so even the Creator of the Universe can't completely overpower us - we are not something separate from It/Him. Then again, He is not much of an Omnipotent being if there is something He can't do.. but that's food for thought. Or aren't my posts 'original' enough, have they been written before by someone else? If so, I'd certainly be glad to read them, because most posts do not seem to resemble my posts AT ALL.
Which means that I shouldn't even be able to write any original posts, and so on.
Plenty of new 'under the sun', whatever that means.
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