On the Impossibilities of Intellectual Property and Other Hare-brained Theories...

By RM
It strikes me that.....

(blur passes across face, loud THUD sounds)

Damn you, you hairy, bowler-wearing bastard!

(nothing? Oh well. Worth a shot)

Anyhow, it strikes me that whatever idea I'm about to have, some French peasant probably thought of it sometime during the now infamous millet harvests of 1479.

Now, granted he may not have had all the tools to correctly formulate his idea. In fact, he didn't even have the seed drill at the time, (Ah, Etienne, mon coeur saigne pour vous.), but nonetheless, I'm sure that at some point Etienne said to himself:

"Ah, quelle bonne récolte de millet c'est. Si seulement mon épouse et sept enfants, seulement deux dont vécu après l'âge de cinq, pourrait voir ceci. Si seulement il y avait une manière de leur montrer immédiatement ce que je vois, aussi bien que des charges de l'autre merde faite par les personnes pharisaïques qui s'aiment des artistes, comme Jean-Phillipe, le forgeron local."

("Ah, what a fine crop of millet this is. If only my wife and seven children, only two of which lived past the age of five, could see this. If only there was a way to instantly show them what I am seeing, as well as loads of other crap done by self-righteous people who fancy themselves artists, like Jean-Phillipe, the local blacksmith.")

Ergo, Etienne invented a fore-runner to Youtube.

So every time I think of something, the only difference between what I am thinking and what good ol' Etienne thought of is the technological and cultural advances that enable me to take his concepts to the next level.

Now, if you've still followed me after my butchery of French, you may be saying, "Now see here, my good fellow, that still means that you've come up with an inventive thought. If you've contributed to it, you have a creative stake in it."

Perhaps, though it's just as likely that someone else in our 6b population across humanity has thought of what I thought of, yet dismissed it as stupid.

So, isn't inventiveness really only the logical extensions of stupidity not knowing any better? From a metaphysical perspective?

So, for all of you wondering why I've shelved my long-anticipated musical memoirs of Daniel Craig's favorite classical music albums, tentatively titled Craig's Liszt, it's because that asshole Etienne already thought of it.
 

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