Original -- From Concentrate...

It's when you think about the basics in the world - the basics that encompass every purpose and provides every sense of self-fulfillment. It's when you think something original…

When a man acts, he derives things. It's this activity that produces fruits. The consciousness of basics that drives these derivations is dormant at this time. Deriving is a scientific process - observing, analyzing and picking up the most suitable for a material purpose one pursues.

All economic activities in the world are the outcome of such analytical thinking. One goes by steps - observing people's needs, collecting resources and efforts to fulfill them and present them in the most likeable, most suitable way. It all seems to work with an initiative, and still it is entirely, and necessarily, a reproduction of already established patterns. Own, Produce, Make available, Present, Earn, Own, this cycle not only fully defines economic activities but every aspect of human life, and is always perceived as a continuation of activities.

Skills are executed, and executed at their best levels. Needs are satisfied. Success is achieved. A 'feel good' is in the air. But somewhere, something is lacking.

The initiative seems to be our own, but the purpose seems to be borrowed. The process, the implementation, the problems and solutions are all our own, but the idea that drives it seems to be missing. One needs to 'derive' the 'uniqueness' - what is 'original' about one's 'set of activities'. The satisfaction is to be derived from the outer world's opinions. If successful, it would be an achievement.

These achievements are mistaken for fulfillments.

Take a break. Why RED? How GREEN? Are there only three basic colors? Why can't there be a letter that is pronounced different from the existing 26 letters of the alphabet? Rhythms are created on the fly. While one cannot prove duplicity in every new rhythm, as the artist can be proved to be totally unaware of a rhythm similar to what he has created, it is highly unlikely that they are always produced unique. Can't there be a musical note undiscovered yet to ensure this uniqueness? Philosophy says: Love, Truth and Beauty are the three basic psychological needs of an ideal man. Can there be a fourth factor? Or, wouldn't it pay?

Change? Pain?

It's when you think about the basic things in the world - the basics that encompass every purpose and provides every sense of self-fulfillment. It's when you think something original. This change, this pain is no different from the one a woman bears at the time of childbirth. All creation is painful by its very basic nature.

When man thinks, he creates. While the immediate outcome may not produce something tangible, it can produce an ever-lasting understanding. While it is not bound to derive any conclusions, it can drive to ultimate resolutions - resolutions that can be hard to justify to the outer world with 'positive' (read 'convenient') ways. Only he knows what he thinks. And he believes what he thinks, as he knows that he thinks.

Derivations can be the non-trivial part of originality-based thinking. The introduction of the originality does not prevent derivative thinking. Rather, it suppresses the 'reproduction' or 'replica' part of them - thus transforming it into a creative process - the process that is ever yielding in terms of psychological pleasure of a truly higher level. Pleasure can be derived from a set of activities or subtle labor - these pleasures are obtained at the end, and have high dependency on the end-result. Creative pleasures, as a natural outcome of original thinking, are self-fulfilling at every moment of the activity. And hence, only creative pleasures have the power to make a truly happy man in an intellectual society.

Most of the time, as we observe in the society around us, the originality within is sacrificed for worldly problems in the name of priorities and practicalities. And then there are two classes of people: One having the sense of sin, and the other not having it. The later is blessed with the happiness of 'comfortable life'; the former is entitled to a lifetime mediocrity of mind. The notable thing though, is that the former still has a chance to avail all the high level pleasures in life some day - not as a reward of pain resulting from mediocrity, but the reward of courage to escape from 'priorities' and 'practicalities'. The later will forever pass its life in mediocrity and never be aware about it.

Material deprivation, combined with social disapproval, has mostly been the 'problem' with the Original Man. His own definition of happiness is almost conceived as insanity. In some cases it cannot be so, or it may be more so. But nobody knows his internal heights and insights - he has the key to see the world in his own way. He sees the things that nobody can see or imagine. “What if I travel faster than light?” asks an absent-minded physics graduate, and the world is changed forever.

The Original Man has the heart of a mature man combined with the mind of a curious child - and all the unhappiness in this world can be attributed to the reverse of this combination.

The courage to ask Why, the courage to ask What If, and the courage to ask this yourself…the domain of the question can be science, art, life, current value system, or more than one of them. And the world no longer matters.