On plagiarism and the theft of shared thought

Photo by Alexander Nedviga on Unsplash

I find the concept of “ideas” to be quite fascinating. Compared to the clearer concept of physical ownership, questions on the ownership of intangibles become an interesting problem. When we talk of relatively bounded intangibles here - patents, trademarks, etc - it's a bit easier to enagage with. But what of thought itself? Can thought be “owned”? Can knowledge “belong” to someone? Can an idea be “stolen”?

This is where this debate becomes a messy area in my view - when we're talking of “ideas”. You're talking of a very nebulous creature that is born, sometimes simultaneously across different places, and yet is still distinct enough to be captured and bound down (or at least, to try to). There are far fewer boundaries here to work with and far more blurred lines than can be used to harm.

An idea only becomes an idea when it is born. Yet in the first moments of its life, it remains quite shapeless. It is the mere wisps of a concept, starting to take some form, but often quite fuzzy. Particularly at the start, one can feasibly see this little creature grow into ten thousand different futures. In those early times, it becomes very difficult to draw a line around the idea and declare that “just this” is the idea.

Yet in such a world where ideas are born, it is almost guaranteed that a similar idea is held by many people. Ideas come from influences, birthed from other ideas that already exist. These would affect more than one person in more than one place. The initial form, shapeless as it is, will be slightly different in each of these places. Yet it would still hold a very similar core and be coloured a very similar hue.

What would it mean to “plagiarize” here? If the world around different people has given birth to ideas that, if not siblings of the blood, are at least siblings of the crache to each other? How could it be theft to be family to one other in such a way? “These ideas merely come from the same source”, they could say. They could continue and claim that, “It is not theft to think the same things as another, and to develop those thoughts based off those same relationships”.

But ideas are never made individually, nor critically, are they developed on their own. Whenever an idea exists, formless as it is at its birth, it must and will engage with its other siblings, held in the minds of other people. It is discussion, debate, and even disagreement that gives greater shape to the idea. This affects each cloud of thought wherever they reside, and move them all to the same direction. The idea then, doesn't live within the mind of one. It exists, instead, in the space in between. It always does.

This is crucial to how we must understand the “theft” of thought - it is where you deny this reality and deny the growth of thought in others. Theft, in this context, can't be that of “taking another's idea”. Ideas only exist in between. Theft is where you prevent this in between. It is when you take a thought that was born formless, given shape in the space in between people, and then deny that shape to those that brought the idea up. Theft, is when one steward of a thought denies stewardship to another, and claims, falsely, that they are the only reason for the thought to exist.

This can be far far more insidious than might first appear because of the very unboundedness of what an idea entails. Even after the growth and forming of the idea in the space in between, it is still, unbounded. When anyone claims this isn't true, by saying the idea is done, the knowledge is built, and that it is theirs alone to know (and perhaps, in their great and all knowing kindness, theirs to share), they deny the very nature of thought.

Thought, then, is always collaborative and liminal. Theft of thought is a denial of both this nature but also of the benefits of thought. Plagiarism, where you take the birth and growth of thought and idea of other people, and then claim it purely yours, is the same. In the long term, those that steal thought do not have the ability to generate it. Yet the pararistical facsimiles they adorn as their own can still have harm - the leech can bleed its host dry after all, and the mosquito can leave disease behind.

I would argue that for the birth, development, and proliferation of thought, you need to protect the mechanism of genesis. You need to protect the spaces where thought is born, where ideas can grow, slowly at first in the little spaces in between a few minds, and then flourish in the wide liminalities across many minds. If you do not, this will be stolen by those outside that do not see this and do not wish to see this. It denies the reality of thought by claiming that it is made by the individual - it is not and can never be. The only way the individual ON THEIR OWN gets thought is by parasitic theft. Theft, which harms those who create, theft which denies the growth of thought to those that collaborate, and theft which takes ideas and kills them, and merely waits for new ideas to be parasitic on. Getting rid of parasitic plagiarism, however harsh it may seem, is then necessary to create the space where thought can be born and grow. After all, however unkind it may be to the roundworm, we care for the life of the child instead.